
rijiss s^ 



.n/ii^- 



HUvSKNTKI) BY 



The Speeches 



of 



Jon. John W^namaker 



on 



)uayism and Boss Domination 
in Pennsylvania Politics. 



Consult the Index. 




^ jmmp^ 



The Speeches 



of 



PJon. John W^^^^niaker 



on 



Quayism and Boss Domination 

in Pennsylvania Politics. 



Published under the direction 

of the 

Business Men's Republican League of the 

State of Pennsylvania, 



The Bourse, Philadelphia. 



ri54 

W^4 



J>^ 



% 



Index. 

Jt'AGE 

Introduction 3 

Mr. Wanamaker'.s letter of Acceptance 8 

The Curse of the Machine « 10 

State OfRcials Draw Two Salaries 30 

Rotten Banks and Trust Companies 36 

A Stab at the Farmers 43 

Samples of Official Jobbery 46 

John Wanamaker and Labor 51 

W. A. Stone's Violated Pledges 58 

An Infamous Record 62 

How the People are Robbed 69 

Stone's Statements Proven False • • 76 

Some Broken Bank Secrets 84 

Old Soldiers Marked for Defeat 91 

M. S. Quay as a Patriot 95 

How the Miners were Buncoed 100 

The Infamous Lexow Expenses 107 

How the Ti'easury is Looted 112 

How Quay Fought McKinley ng 

Facts for Business Men 225 

The Land Lien Tax Bill I3I 

Railroad Passes and Politicians I37 

Quay — A Sham Reformer ^44 

Farmers and Taxation I54 

Quay Did Not Make Wanamaker Postmaster-General 159 

In General Reeder's Home jgg 

If Wanamaker Wei'e Governor 17g 

Quay's Kitchen Cabinet Igg 

$10,000 Voted to a Fake Hospital I95 

The Fight to Go On ' ^ 204 

The Machine Must be Overthrown 211 

The Quay Mach"ne Dissected 225 

The Next Legislature 246 



INTRODUCTION. 

The continually rising tide of party misrule and legislative 
corruption in Pennsylvania, under the influence of Quayism, 
met its first organized opposition during the legislative 
session of 1897. 

Immediately folloAving the United States Senatorial con- 
test in January, 1897, the ''Seventy-six" Kepublican members 
of the Legislature who had dared to voice the wishes of their 
constituents, notwithstanding the threats of the bosses, re- 
solved themselves into the now famous "Seventy-six'' or- 
ganization. 

The sole objects of this compact were to correct legislative 
abuses; to oppose legislative corruption; to protect Penn- 
sylvania's educational and business interests, and to compel 
the wise and honest expenditure of the State's money. Any 
legislator who would stand for these principles was eligible 
for membership, whether a Eepublican or a Democrat. 

Of the original "Seventy-six" members all stood firm 
throughout the session, save five, who proved too weak to 
withstand the subduing and debauching process of the 
machine. Yet the membership was more than kept good by 
recruits from the machine's ranks^ who refused to be driven 
into a betrayal of their constituent's interests to pay the 
political debts of the machine. 

For six months this determined minority disputed every 
inch of legislative ground and fought with ever increasing 
courage. They encompassed the defeat of scores of vicious 
machine measures; they saved hundreds of thousands of 
dollars of the people's money by exposing illegal expense 
charges and padded pay-rolls; they protected the public 
schools, and defeated the efforts of the machine to take 



4 SPEECHES OF EON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

away every protection to the millions of State funds; they 
made such unceasing war upon bad legislation that Senator 
Quay found it was no longer possible to pass iniquitous bills 
by long distance ^phone, and he and his colleague were com- 
pelled to desert their posts at Washington and go to Harris- 
burg and personally lobby for bad measures. But the most 
important result of their labors was to tear away the mask 
and expose Quay methods that had long existed, though 
unknown to the public. The restrictive barriers maintained 
at enormous cost by the machine to prevent the real facts 
of State management from reaching the public, were broken 
down, and the tax-payers of Pennsylvania, for the first time, 
learned how they had been systematically and unmercifully 
robbed, and why Pennsylvania, with her countless resources 
and great industrial interests, can produce neither labor 
sufficient to keep her people employed or taxes enough to 
pay her expenses, though she is to-day the most over-taxed 
State in the Union. 

The detection and exposure of law breakers usually stop 
the commission of the same acts by the same persons, not 
so, however, with those who follow the black flag of Quayism, 
for by tradition and experience they are taught that the 
machine will give protection to all who may violate laws 
or cominit crimes while doing its bidding. Thus it seemed 
that the startling exposures made by the "Seventy-six" 
during the session of 1897, only made the machine more 
defiant and determined to ignore and resent all protests and 
warnings. 

But the attempt to destroy opposition by their crushing 
process only sow^ed the seeds for revolt, and by their du- 
plicity and high-handed methods they were really planting 
destroying mines under their own fortifications. Senator 
Quay was winning victories throughout the State under the 
banner of Eeform, while his henchmen, under orders, at 
Harrisburg, were plotting the death of every Eeform meas- 
ure he was solemnly pledged to pass. His representatives 
were denying the urgent needs of charity, on the pretext of 
insufficient revenues, and at the same time he and they 
were conspiring to rob the State by indemnity bonds and 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

bogus pay-rolls. His henclinieii sought to cripple the free 
school system of the State to relieve the brewers and cor- 
porations from paying their honest share of taxes. And 
while each day, in the Senate and House, new exposures 
were made and attempted steals were unmasked, and in 
the face of the vigorous denunciation of a united State press, 
the machine continued its shameless course until the last 
hour of the session. Thus it was that Senator Quay, by 
his own direction and with his own abject followers, pre- 
pared and loaded the guns that will be trained upon the 
Eepublican party for years to come in Pennsylvania. 

How deep is the growing feeling of disgust among the 
people was evidenced a few months after the close of the 
session, when they accepted the first opportunity and struck 
at the machine-made candidate for State Treasurer. For 
the first time in many years a majority of all the votes cast 
were against a regularly nominated Republican candidate, 
and to emphasize this condemnation of- the machine more 
than 100,000 votes were given to a comparatively unknown 
candidate, nominated upon a platform for which they had 
no sympathy, only because he had declared his opposition 
to Senator Quay. To a boss less indifferent to the will of 
the people and his party's w^elfare, such a warning would 
have been heeded. But, following a former precedent, when 
under grave charges of having unlawfully speculated with 
State funds, made by leading journals of the country. 
Senator Quay determined to let go unchallenged all charges, 
and to again seek to vindicate himself, and those who were 
caught ^^red-handed.'' This was done by forcing upon the 
party, through the manipulation of his powerful political 
machine, a two years' slated candidate for Governor, evi- 
dently believing that the more machine made the candidate 
was, and the more offensive he might be to the people, the 
greater would be his personal vindication if he won. 

It was the avowed intention of the machine to force the 
nomination of such a candidate that brought together the 
Bourse meeting of February 2, 1897. It was the most re- 
markable, as w^ell as the most important Eepublican gather- 
ing in the party's history. More than four hundred leading 



6 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

Republicans representing fifty-five counties of the State 
were present to bear witness of the widespread dissatisfac- 
tion within the party ranks, and to protest in the name of 
honest Eepublicanism against one man nominating, two 
years before the convention was to meet, a candidate who 
did not possess the confidence of the full party. It was a 
most representative Republican gathering, composed of men 
who fought for the Nation's honor in the Sixties, and men 
who have been foremost in bearing the party's colors to 
victories since the days of Lincoln, and who never faltered. 
They were not actuated by personal ambitions, but viewing 
with alarm the approaching storm that threatens to destroy this 
party they came to try to save it from impending disaster. 
It was the unanimous sense of the meeting that a candidate 
should be suggested who would rally and crystallize all 
anti-machine elements. Such a candidate not only must 
be a man of high character and recognized ability, but one 
possessed of courage to fight a seemingly hopeless battle, and 
who would be ready at any time to sink every personal con- 
sideration for the party's good, and stand ready, even if 
upon the threshold of victory, to yield to any course that 
would preserve party honor and party harmony. 

Hon. John Wanamaker who, at the time, was in the South, 
where communication with him was impossible, was, without 
hfs knowledge or consent, made the meeting's unanimous 
choice, and through a committee he was asked to become a 
candidate for the Republican nomination of Governor within 
party lines. He withheld his letter of acceptance for some 
time hoping that the machine would deem it wise to heed 
the warning of so important a body of Republicans and 
allow a candidate to be selected who would possess the con- 
fidence of the whole party. But when convinced that the 
machine's policy was to again ride "rough-shod" over the 
will of the people, he untiringly sought by pledging assist- 
ance and active support, some other acceptable candidate on 
whom all forces could unite, feeling that his efforts for another 
could be made far more effective, as he had no personal 
desire to be Governor and if he became a candidate must 
distinctly so declare. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Failing to find any one who would consent to become a 
candidate after nearly six weeks of delay, at a time when 
one-third of all the delegates had been elected, without the 
promise of a single delegate, and against the wishes of his 
political advisers, Mr. Wanamaker accepted the call and 
became a candidate for the Eepublican nomination for Gov- 
ernor. From the day of Mr. Wanamaker's acceptance until 
the morning of the convention, w^hen he withdrew his name 
at the request of the same body that had called him into 
the contest, and allowed his delegates to support an un- 
machine owned candidate, on whom it was hoped all factions 
might unite, he waged a campaign against machine and legis- 
lative corruption that will go down into history as the most 
important political event of the closing decade of the cen- 
tury. 

Mp. Wanamaker made no effort to secure the support of 
delegates for himself; his sole aim was to elect men who 
would represent the people instead of the machine. War 
was declared against Spain almost simultaneously with the 
opening of his campaign which for several weeks largely 
claimed the attention of the people, and allowed the machine 
to elect delegates easily, but" during the closing weeks of 
the contest a revolution set in that swept practically all the 
delegates that were afterward elected into the Anti-Quay 
column. The extent of the revolution is told by the fact 
that one hundred and sixty-four delegates, seventeen less 
than one-half of all, cast their votes in convention against 
the machine slated candidate. 

During the campaign lasting seventy-two days Mr. Wana- 
maker made the most remarkable series of political speeches 
ever delivered by one man in so short a time. Sixty-seven 
in number, of such wonderful versatility that no two speeches 
are alike, and no two sentences in all the speeches are 
identical. The National attention they have attracted attest 
to their great merit. The Business Men's League is in 
receipt of thousands of requests from all parts of the 
countr}^, and having exhausted the files of all city papers 
which pubb"shed the speeches, has deemed it expedient to 
have portions of some of the speeches printed. 



8 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

MR. WANAMAKER'S LETTER OF 
ACCEPTANCE. 

Philadelphia, March 9, 1898. 
To the Committee of Notification of the Bourse Meeting: 
Messrs. Thomas Hoopes, Elias Deemer, W. T. Tilden, 
Major George W. Merrick, Cplonel E. A. Irwin, Pro- 
fessor John Meigs, Joseph W. Yocum, E. W. Meisen- 
helder, York; H. A. Slate, Williamsport. 

Dear Sirs: — I consent to be a candidate for Governor in 
pursuance with your request presented to me February 7. 
My reply to you has been necessarily delayed. These are the 
reasons: — 

I have not wanted to become a candidate and add to my 
labors the duties of personally conducting a campaign. 

I have been endeavoring to persuade you to select any 
one of a dozen men of the State available for the place. 

I ardently hoped that the leaders of the Republican party 
would accept the notice served upon them by the Bourse 
meeting that the people intended to have something to say 
as to who should be their next Governor. 

The developments of the past two weeks have been inval- 
uable to your cause and conclusive upon me in determining 
my action. 

The crisis upon us is awfully serious in its bearing upon the 
future standing and prosperity of the State. Since the last 
three county conventions I have had a clearer vision of the 
dangers of the situation — and now, after taking ample time 
to analyze existing conditions, and having carefully con- 
sidered every phase of the situation from all political stand- 
points, I have arrived at this final decision with a compre- 
hensive knowdedge of what the contest involves personally 
and what the chances of success are. 

I am neither deceived nor influenced by false hopes, and 
know full well what my prospects of success are; with the 
delegate electing machinery in the hands of the enemy; with 
primaries and conventions so manipulated as to defeat in- 
stead of register the will of the voter; with the same high- 
handed methods that were employed to send an almost solid 



LETTER OF AVVEFTANCE. 9 

delegation to the last National convention instructed for 
Senator Quay, when an overwhelming majority of the voters 
of the State were for McKinley; with manufactured contests 
and bogus claims to be sustained by a State committee that 
can be relied upon to seat enough contesting delegates to 
give th.e machine candidate a majority — as was done at last 
year's State Convention with the delegates of the Twenty- 
seventh District of Philadelpihia — and the contest that is 
now set up, without a scintilla of regularity or legality, in 
the Twenty-fourth District of Philadelphia, involving six 
delegates, and with a chainnan who gives timely warning that 
the State organization will be against me if nominated. 

But I am no more moved by these conditions than by the 
rumored deals of politicians, the threats of character as- 
sassins, the tongue of slander or the fact that nearly one- 
third of all the delegates to the next State convention have 
already been elected. I ignore all personal considerations, 
I accept your invitation as a call of duty, and making the 
issue one of principle, not spoils, I am ready to go forward 
with you in your battle for political emancipation, convinced 
that the right will ultimately triumph and that the people 
desire to settle the question themselves, and settle it this 
very year. 

If this action of yours in bringing me into the field creates 
discord within party ranks I take no blame therefor, as I 
have not solicited the nomination. Neither is it essential that 
I be elected Governor. It will cost me nothing to step aside 
at any time for such a man as you and your associates agree 
to who represents something more than a slate or the \\dll 
of a perpetuating boss. I simply hold it to be imperative 
that some one shall be selected to whom the interests of the 
State can be safely entrusted, who shall represent the 
people, not the edict of any one man. 

Therefore, let there be no misunderstanding as to where 
the responsibility rests, and let the Eepublican voter demand 
a strict accounting. With school funds long past due, and 
personal property taxes withheld from counties to allow the 
State Treasurer to farm out millions of dollars to favorite 
banks; with a Capitol Commission breaking down the re- 



10 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

strictive barriers erected by popular sentiment, and planning 
a building that will cost millions when completed; with the 
knowledge that indemnity bonds, padded pay rolls, Lexow 
bills, Legislative junketings, and mileage grabbers will be 
paid out of the State Treasury if the machine elects its 
Governor, I am convinced from proofs in my hands from all 
parts of the State that the people • are ready to unite with 
you in driving back the bosses and re-entering upon their 
rightful inheritance. 

The next chief executive of Pennsylvania must be a man 
possessing the fullest confidence of the people, without a 
Lexow collar and free from every stamp of the machine. 

When the people rise they are all-powerful to declare the 
end of misgovernment of cities and States. It may take 
time and toil, but there must be many true men and women 
in Pennsylvania ready to take ^ stand and remain standing 
until a new order of politics is an accomplished fact. 

Somebody must begin. I am ready to do my part. The 
fight must be fought and fought to the finish if it takes all 
Summer, with the Autumn and winter thrown in. 

My views in detail as to the live issues of the hour I may 
have the honor to give hereafter. 

JOHN WAKAMAKEE. 



THE CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 



How M. S. Quay has cost the Taxpayers of Penn- 
sylvania over $2,500,000 in Twenty Years — The 
Terrible Record of the last Legislature owned 
and controlled by the Bosses — A Scheme 
to create new Offices to benefit the 
Machine at a cost to the People of 
over $750,000 — How the Beer 
interests w^ere to be pro- 
tected by Increasing 
the School Tax of 
every Citizen. 



The first speech of Ex-Postmaster General Jo'hn Wana- 
maker in the preliminary campaign for Governor was de- 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. H 

livered in Lancaster on March 16, 1898. The Court Room 
was packed to its capacity and hundreds were turned away 
unable to obtain admittance. Mr. Wanamaker sai^: 

"The first gun of real war booms over the hills of your 
historic county to-night in opening the battle of your in- 
sulted and outraged Commonwealth against the invasion of 
its lights. 

"This Court House becomes an arsenal and ^ach man a 
volunteer. Slowly the old frigate Pennsylvania has drifted 
to anchorage in quiet waters, and her enemies are springing 
mines upon her to tear her into shreds. Hidden and reckless 
foes are on the alert to sweep her on to destruction. The 
beautiful white battleship that steamed out of New York 
harbor a month ago became a white coffin buried in the dark 
sea in the dead of night. Without passing hasty judgment 
on our sister nation and willing to wait for all information, 
the air is full of the fear of treachery and dastardly brutality. 
We do not seek war, but we are not afraid of it. To the 
Congress that voted fifty millions into the President's hands 
for immediate use if necessary, we send loyal greeting and 
say make it a hundred millions if needed. To the Navy 
Department that bought two battleships yesterday we send 
cordial approval — and say you have our consent to buy two 
more to-morrow. What do you say, men and women of 
Lancaster, the hume of Phad Stevens? Those of you who 
approve of securing peace by prompt and vigorous prepara- 
tions for war, say ^Yes/ and say it strongly. We are not 
clamoring for bloodshed, but we are swearing fidelity to 
the flag and insisting on justice to the honored dead 
and living. And while old Pennsylvania of the original 
thirteen stands up ready with every sister State in the Union 
to meet the Cuban questio'U, there has come to us long-suffer- 
ing Pennsylvanians an issue of our own. 

"From the lakes to the Delaware and Maryland boundaries 
we have been shaken by fear and forebodings. It is not a 
Charleston earthquake shaking houses and churches, but an 
earthquake of anxiety that is setting our souls to tremblf 
for the future of our old State. 



12 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

"Patriotically speaking, comparing the State with what she 
once vm.s and what she might have been in the place she de- 
served in the galaxy of States, she has fallen to the rear and 
only a few memories of her glory are left. In olden times 
our statesmen were golden priests, who carried chalices of 
wood, but in these days we have wooden priests of states- 
men, who*carry chalices of gold and pockets full of places 
to bless and unbless their retainers. 

"Corruption is at its worst and the commercialism of poli- 
tics is the chief characteristic of Pennsylvania. These are 
not pleasing words, but what do you expect from me but the 
plainest words I can command? To idle spectators to whom 
life is only an amusement this occasion and the causes that 
lie back of it may look like a mild form of insanity. Con- 
versing one night with my old friend, the Vicar of the Catho- 
lic Church, now Bishop Ilorstmann, he said, in speaking of 
a valued friend, that he was insane on the particular object 
to which he had concentrated his life. This in a measure 
is true of all of us. In this short life a man cannot do much 
unless he masses his guns and projects all his forces in one 
direction almost as if he were insane at that point. I am 
here to-night to throw myself unreservedly and unqualifiedly 
upon the side of the people to regain their lost possessions 
in Pennsylvania. The stream cannot rise higher than its 
source. It is futile to deny the workmanship of an article 
w^hen the private stamp of the manufacturer is engraved 
upon it. 

"If the genius who selected and directed the Pennsylvania 
Legislature of 1897, and moulded and shaped its course, had 
not proudly and publicly proclaimed his absolute mastery 
over it, its ownership might have been questioned. But its 
record of promises broken and party pledges ignored; its 
abuse of public trust and insatiable desire for public plunder; 
of legislation born of injustice, iniquity and crime driven 
through under the "whip and spur'^ of the boss; of trusts 
fostered and protected and legitimate commercial interests 
assaulted; of placing the brewery paramount to the school 
house, and the interests of beer pre-eminent over the crying 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 13 

demands of charity and popular education, bear too distinctly 
the character and indelible imprint of its master spirit. 

"The session of '97 was the longest, save one, in the history 
of the State; its unwarranted length was due to three distinct 
causes: First, nearly a month was lost by the presiding 
officers of the Senate and House delaying the appointment 
of the seventy-eight standing committees, that choice chair- 
manships and places might be found to reward the supporters 
of the machine's candidate for United States Senator. Then 
the frequent and oft-recurring absences of Speaker Boyer, 
Senator Quay's personal selection, whose loyalty to the 
brewers was well known, having from them, it is alleged, 
been the personal recipient of favor when, during his admin- 
istration as State Treasurer, he was under a cloud, lost 
several weeks; followed, in turn, by the time lost in the 
manoeuvering of the machine to save beer from paying any 
additional revenue required, and its attempts instead to 
place the burden upon the land of the farmer, the public 
schools and charities. 

THE PROMISE OF REFORM. 

"No Pennsylvania Legislature ever set sail upon waters so 
smooth, none with such possibilities for good and with its 
path of duty so clear. 

"For two years Senator Quay had won a continuous round 
of victories under the "banner of reform." Clad in armor 
of reform promises and pledges, mounted upon a reform 
steed, richly caparisoned with civil service reform pretenses, 
he had gathered to his standard many potent elements of 
true reform. * 

"Reform and moral forces formerly opposed to his methods, 
believed and took courage in his pledges, and in his hour 
of need, when political life and future trembled in the 
balance, they threw their strength with Senator Quay and 
changed defeat to victory. 

"As a thank-offering for political life saved he renew-ed his 
reform pledges. 

"Every Quay candidate for the Legislature was elected upon 
a reform platform. A platform of abstract, but positive and 
specific planks. 



14 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Senator Quay himself secured and caused to be published 
during the Senatorial contest written pledges of nearly all of 
the machine members. He committed and welded them so 
securely to the rock of reform that he alone possessed the 
power to break their anchoirage; furthermore^, Senator Quay 
absolutely controlled every committee possessed of power to 
originate or create legislation. Therefore his reform bills 
were sure to be passed, as well as every other good or bad 
measure, that his imperial will might dictate. 

"The anti-Quay element was for true reform of every kind; 
the Democrats were for Senator Quay^s reform bills for party 
reasons. With factions and parties thus united for better 
things, is it any wonder that the Goddess of Eeform, bound 
and manacled so long by Pennsylvania's boss, should weep 
for joy when she beheld the hand that had enslaved her 
raised to strike the blows that would set her free? 

"Thus was launched Senator Quay's reform Legislature of 
1897. 

THE LEGISLATURE'S BLACK RECORD. 

"With the last of Governor Hastings' vetoes ended the 
official public exposures of the shameless acts of the last 
Legislature. 

"The Legislature of '97 was not worse than its predecessors 
have been, under the same control. People believe it worse 
only because the cover has been slightly lifted, disclosing 
the long existing rottenness. Could the veil of confidence 
and secrecy that protects the workings of committees be torn 
aside, and the true history of jobs conceived, but that suffered 
"still-birth," b^ written, it would furnish a chapter of at- 
tempted assaults and betrayals far blacker than now recorded 
in the book of Legislative dishonor. To attempt the review 
of individual schemes would be impossible; we can treat them 
only briefly by groups. 

"The almost uninterrupted warfare in Pennsylvania for 
two years found the machine at the convening of the Legis- 
lature bankrupt, with' extravagant and prodigal promises 
made necessary to hold the machine intact. The enlarge- 
ment of the classified lists had so encroached upon the po- 
litical preserves of Senator Quay that thousands of appoint- 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 15 

iiieiits heretofore belonging to him as 'Pennsylvania's Spoils- 
man Chief were placed under civil service protection. But 
a machine that has unblushingly tal^en millions of interest 
money from the people would take more, and deliberately 
conspired by the introduction of various commission bills to 
create a host of new and useless, but high-salaried, positions; 
and also to place thousands of important officials under the 
control of the machine. 

"We soon forget dangers that are past; and while the oppo- 
sition to these nefarious schemes attracted widespread atten- 
tion at the time they were under fire, they are now well-nigh 
forgotten. The daring conceptions of the political "ringster" 
are but the natural result of long-continued unrestraint, upon 
which the layman looks with amazement and incredulity, 
believing them only idle fancies and impossibilities. But yet 
they are not only possible, but really very easy of accomplish- 
ment by the Legislative machine. Their first monstrous 
scheme was to repeal the Brooks high license law, and pass 
in its stead a measure patterned after the Kaines law of New 
York State, thus creating a partisan and political Excise 
Board named by the machine, that would control the grant- 
ing of all liquor licenses within the Commonwealth; this bill 
was the result of two years' work and a combination with 
certain distillers, who were to furnish ammunition to the 
machine in future campaigns. More than a year 'before the 
Quay organs began paving the way for this vicious piece of 
legislation, as was evidenced by editorials in the Quay organs. 
NEW OFFICES CREATED BY THE HUNDRED. 

"The next gigantic plan was to establish a Prison Com- 
mission named by the same political machine, granting to 
them control of all State penal institutions, county prisons 
and houses of detention in the Commonwealth, with full 
and unlimited authority and power to appoint all officers and 
employees, and to enlarge, construct and remove buildings 
without reservation as to cost, thereby placing in the hands 
of the machine several thousand responsible arid lucrative 
positions. 

"Then came the bill creating the Railway Commission, 
with its board of high-salaried Commissioners and other ap- 



16 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

pointees that would stand as a constant menace to every rail- 
road in the State that refused to pay tribute to the machine. 

"Next was the Civil Service Commission^ designed to con- 
trol for Quay all appointments in the cities of Philadelphia 
and Pittsburg. Followed by the Electric Light Commission, 
with more fat offices to be controlled by the machine, that 
every electric light company in the State might be ^sand- 
bagged;' and the School Book Commission, with more good 
positions that could be made a great money producer. We 
must not forget the Boiler Inspecting Commission, with 
seven fat appointments and many clerks that could reap a 
harvest for the machine. 

"Then there was the contemplated Capitol Building Com- 
mission, that, like the Public Buildings Commission of Phila- 
delphia and Tennyson's "Brook,'' would run on forever, 
affording life jobs to many of the faithful. And the attempt 
to create two new Common Pleas Courts for Philadelphia. 
Also the attempt to change the specific amount allowed the 
State Board of Charities for scientific investigation to an 
indefinite amount for such expenditures, which would afford 
more help to the faithful. We might continue to enumerate 
smaller jobs indefinitely, but it is unnecessary. 

"The slaughter of the entire outfit of commission bill 
snakes was not accidental, and thereby hangs a tale. 

"The anti-Quay men, divining the purpose and dangerous 
character of these bills, quietly formed a combination with 
all the interests assailed. The temperance people were 
aroused; hundreds of State papers declared against the 
scheme intended to break down the restrictive license bar- 
riers; the prison authorities became alarmed, lest for political 
purposes our penal systems should be impaired, and gave 
valiant assistance; the railroads joined hands to defeat a 
scheme intended for blackmailing purposes; electric interests 
responded, as did others, and the entire outfit of Quay's com- 
mission bills was linked together and strangled horning. 

OVER $750,000 WORTH OF OFFICES FOR FAVORITES. 

"Those who followed closely the legislative proceedings 
at Harrisburg will remember that legislative correspondents 



CURISE OF THE MACUII L. 17 

estimated that the cost of the new offices to '>e created by the 
Quay commission bills would be $750,000, and ihis estimate 
is far too conservative. Were it not that every bill creating 
a commission was introduced by a pronounced Quay man, 
who knows no will but the will of Quay, the responsibility 
for these bills might be denied by the head of the machine. 
The prediction and positive assertion can be made that, but 
for the stand assumed by, the anti-Quay members, the entire 
outfit of commission bills would have been passed. 

"Failing to fulfill political promises with the places expected 
to be provided by commissions the machine was compelled 
to find other means. They then made the Legislature a 
Johnstown's flood of investigating committees and junketing 
trips with fat paying Jobs, and w^hen these were found in- 
sufficient they unblushingly established the padded pay-roll 
of more than $25,000, which came to light through the no- 
torious indemnity bond expose, signed by Senator Quay's 
chairman of the Eepublican State Committee, John P. Elkin, 
and the ex-Premier of Governor Hastings' Cabinet, Frank 
Eeeder. 

"A most interesting chapter of political history is Quay's 
reform manifesto, promulgated in 1895. He promised to pass 
four specific bills, viz.: To prevent the coi-porate control 
of legislative bodies; to prevent the payment of occupation 
or poll tax by political clubs and organizations; to prohibit 
the soliciting of political assessments from municipal em- 
ployees; and to prevent political interference with the right 
of corporate or municipal employees to vote. 

"He did not even attempt to have a bill drafted ^to prohibit 
the corporate control of legislative bodies.' 
QUAY'S SHAM REFORMS. 

"The poll tax bill, as originally reported, would have 
stopped the evil of buying tax receipts, and read as follows: 

" 'That from and after the passage of this act, it shall be 
unlawful for any person or persons to pay or cause to be paid 
any occupation or poll tax assessed for State or county pur- 
poses against any elector, except o^ the separate, written 
and signed order of such elector, authorizing such payment 
to be made.' 



18 ^^FEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"This was amended by Quay's orders by striking out the 
word separate, thereby allowing any number of persons to 
sign a single paper giving power of attorney to one man to 
purchase their tax receipts. Thus the vicious practice that 
has long existed is legalized by the passage of this bill as 
amended. 

"The non-political assessment bill, as originally reported, 
read as follows: 

" 'That it shall be unlawful for any officer of this Common- 
wealth or of any county thereof or for any Mayor or head 
of department or other officer of any city of this Common- 
wealth to make or cause or knowingly permit to be made any 
assessment upon the pay, wages, or salary of any officer or 
employee appointed by or holding office or employment 
under him for any political or party purpose whatsoever or to 
make or cause or knowingly permit to be made any demand, 
request, or suggestion for the payment or gift of any money 
or other valuable thing to any committee, organization, or 
person for use in any manner for any political or party pur- 
pose.^ 

"This was also amended by Quay's orders by striking out 
the words 'request or suggestion,^ thereby legalizing another 
kind of election fraud making it unlawful to solicit political 
assessments only at the point of a revolver. 

"The non-political intereference bill, as originally reported, 
read as follows: 

" 'That it shall be unlawful for any Mayor or head or chief 
of any department or any other employee of any city to direct 
or wilfully suggest to any member of the police, paid fire 
department, or any other employee of said city to solicit or 
influence any voter in respect to the exercise of his right of 
suffrage at any primary election of any political party or any 
general or special election for any Federal, State, county, 
city, municipal or school district office, or to employ or solicit 
any person to solicit or influence any voter in respect to the 
exercise of his right of suffrage as aforesaid.' 

"This was amended by the Quay committee by inserting 
the word 'unduly' before the words 'solicit or influence,' 
thereby making it unlawful only to use physical force. 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 19 

"The bill was so plainly hypocritical that it did not pass 
as amended. 

THE STATE TEEASUKY AS A POLITICAL MINT. 

"The exact facts of the manoeuvers of Quay^s machine over 
the bills to secure interest on State moneys are too important 
to be passed over. 

"At the session of 1895 Senator Kanffman, then the only 
anti-Quay member of the State Senate, introduced a bill requir- 
ing the payment of interest on deposits of State funds. Every 
effort to have the bill brought from the committee failed, 
and by orders it was killed. Senator Kauffman, with char- 
acteristic perseverance, at once started an agitation that soon 
bore fruit among the taxpayers of the State, as they realized 
that during the reign of Quayism in Pennsylvania the State 
from this source alone had been the loser of more than 
$2,000,000 in interest that had gone to support and sustain 
Senator Quay's political machine. 

"During the thirty days preceding the last session two 
hundred State papers had indorsed the movement and de- 
manded speedy and proper legislation to divert this vast 
sum from the coifers of the machine to the benefit of the 
people. 

"For fifteen years the control of the office of State Treas- 
urer has been the citadel of Senator Quay's power; it is be- 
lieved to have yielded annually a campaign fund of not less 
than $100,000, at the same time mortgaging influential 
bankers and affording unlimited credit to borrow vast sums 
for personal campaigns, and exhibiting incumbents entering 
upon the office of State Treasurer poor, and on a $5,000 
salary in two years retiring with a competency. 

"The State Treasurer's office has been the storm centre of 
suspicion and scandal for many years. Public sentiment, 
always strong, at times inflamed by rumors of great shortages, 
of funds deposited in unsound banks, of illegal collections of 
interest on State moneys and of reckless speculation by Treas- 
ury officials, has time and again unsuccessfully demanded a 
Treasury investigation, always to find the sentinels that 
guarded every approach too well entrenched. 



20 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 
QUAY AND THE PEOPLE'S BANK. 

"To give a better conception of the great loss sustained by 
the State, the State Treasurer's official monthly statement 
bearing date of July 1, 1893, during the money panic, shows 
at that time a balance of $8,123,747.69 in favored State banks, 
paying no interest to the State. From a representative of a 
leading business concern of the State I learn that on the same 
date he was obliged to pay a premium of 3 per cent, for cash 
with which to pay wages. To show to what extent the fund 
is manipulated for political purposes, a Philadelphia bank, 
the People's, capitalized at $150,000, a private institution, 
whose president is Quay's old lieutenant, has continuously 
carried a deposit ranging from $300,000 to $1,200,000, while 
school districts are waiting in vain for school money long past 
due. 

"An interesting feature right here is the fact that the Peo- 
ple's Bank is the first place that Senator Quay visits when he 
goes to Philadelphia. 

"The declared intention of Eepresentative Smith, of Phila- 
delphia, an anti-Quay man, to introduce a resolution to in- 
vestigate the management of the State Treasury and Auditor 
General's office at first met with violent opposition from the 
machine; but becoming alarmed lest such a resolution intro- 
duced by a man of honest purpose would get beyond their 
control and pass, and as the author of such resolution would 
have become a member of the committee, if appointed, they 
decided to take no chances. And a resolution was offered by 
Senator Mitchell, of Jefferson, thereby insuring the appoint- 
ment of a committee of ultra-Quay men appointed by Quay's 
President of the Senate, and Speaker Boyer, an ex-State 
Treasurer, during whose term irregularities occurred so 
serious that to-day his chief clerk is a fugitive from justice. 
The agitation incident to the proposed investigation increased 
the existing demand for the passage of the interest bill, which 
at first the Quay people contemptuously ignored, but it be- 
came so strong that they were forced to take action. 

"The Mitchell resolution passed the Senate, but when it 
reached the House was promptly defeated by the Quay men, 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 2^ 

who wanted no investigation, assisted by the anti-Quay men, 
who refused to lend their aid to such a flagrant farce. By 
orders the resolution was recalled from the Senate, but before 
it passed the anti-Quay men tore off the mask and revealed its 
true purpose. The resolution created a committee, without 
power to think or act for themselves, who, at some future 
time, not mentioned, were to submit a report and suggest 
such legislation as the machine would permit. But the re- 
port they were certain to offer was not the really mischievous 
element in the trick, for the phraseology of the resolution 
prevented the ways and means committee from considering 
any interest bill until the investigating committee had made 
its report. This was the Quay scheme to delay the report 
until insufficient time remained, to pass an ^interest bill.' 
This was Senator Quay's first attempt to defeat the interest 
bill, and precipitated the first drawn battle of the session. 

SCOTClING TREASURY SNAKES. 

"The anti-Quay people discovered the snake in the resolu- 
tion and prepared for battle. The Quay people nrst defeated 
an amendment offered by Kepresentative Smith, of Philadel- 
phia, Troviding, That three Common Pleas Judges be ap- 
pointed to conduct the investigation; and also provided that 
nothing in this resolution shall interfere with the pending 
or contemplated legislation.' But the debate, lasting nearly 
two hours, developed such a sentiment against this covert 
attempt to defeat all interest legislation that when Kepre- 
sentative Bliss, of Delaware, the anti-Quay candidate for 
Chairman of the House caucus, offered an amendment: Pro- 
vided, That nothing contained in this resolution shall hinder 
the passage of bills imposing 2 per cent, interest on State de- 
posits,' it was passed with a rush. Having won their fight, 
the anti-Quay men allowed the investigating resolution to 
pass. 

"Thus began the battle over the interest bill, which lasted 
for more than five months, opposed at every step and juggled 
with at every turn by Quay's men. Three interest bills were 
introduced — Senator Kauffman's pioneer bill in the Senate, 
and Representative William F. Stewart's bill, drafted after 



22 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

the Philadelphia city ordinances, and also one by Representa- 
tive W. C. Smith, of Bedford, all anti-Quay men. 

"The Kauffman bill on second reading was sent back to 
committee ostensibly for amendments, where for six weeks 
the committee, composed wholly of Quay men, baffled all 
efforts to have it reported until April 13. Senator Kauffman 
was forced to resort to a most unusual proceeding and offered 
a resolution to discharge the committee from further consider- 
ation of the bill, which resulted in having the bill again 
placed upon the calendar. 

"The Stewart and Smith bills were meanwhile slumbering 
in the House ways and means committee, and no sort of 
persuasion or argument could move them until Representa- 
tive Stewart served notice that unless some action were taken 
before a certain date he too would move to have the commit- 
tee discharged from its further consideration. 

"This again forced the issue, and the Stewart bill was re- 
ported after being amended by the Quay people, in committee, 
to designate three banks for active deposits carrying one-half 
million dollars each, which were to pay no interest. This 
was the first step, in turn to be increased to six active banks, 
as was indicated in an interview given out, it is believed, by 
Senator Quay himself at that time, thereby still reserving for 
manipulation $3,000,000, which, at one-half the legal rate, 
would yield him $90,000 annually. 

"The second drawn battle over the interest bill occurred in 
the House on March 24, the anti-Quay element insisting that 
all deposits, in whatsoever banks, should pay interest to the 
State, while the Quay men contended that banks carrying 
active accounts should pay nothing. After several hours of 
the hardest kind of fighting, the anti-Quay men carried an 
amendment compelling the payment of not less than 1^ per 
cent, interest on daily balances from banks carrying active 
accounts, and 2 per cent, in all other banks. Thus was 
thwarted another open attempt of Senator Quay to defeat the 
interest bill. 

HOW QUAY HAS COST THE STATE $2,500,000. 

"Have you ever looked into what is involved in this matter 
of the State moneys? „i_.^_^.._^ 



CURSE OF TEE MACHINE. 23 

"Of the amount, $5,500,000, due to public schools on the 
first Monday of June, 1897, $3,500,000 was yet unpaid Janu- 
ary 1, 1898, with an average balance of $4,579,131.15 of 
State's money in favored banks for the seven months from 
June 1, 1897, to January 1, 1898. 

"Official statement of balances in the State Treasury at the 
close of each month during the years 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 
1896, 1897 and first two months of 1898: 

1892, average monthly balance $6,445,739.50 

1893, average monthly balance 6,406,661.70 

1894, average monthly balance 5,096,303.49 

1895, average monthly balance 4,202,852.88 

1896, average monthly balance 3,683,881.84 

1897, average monthly balance 4,253,447.09 



Total $30,088,886.50 

Average balance in State banks from January 

1, 1892, to January 1, 1898 $5,014,814.41 

Two and one-half per cent, interest on balances 

for six years 752,222.16 

"The average balances and value of money have decreased 
the past six years, so the average, $5,014,814.41, is far too 
small, but, using this average as a basis, the Quay machine 
has taken from the taxpayers in ten years $1,253,703.60, and 
in the past twenty years $2,507,407.20. 

JUGGLING WITH SCHOOL FUNDS. 

"The machine's juggling with the school appropriations is 
one of the blackest pages of legislative history. 

"In June last Chairman Elkin gave out an interview advo- 
cating an annual reduction of the public school appropriation 
of $1,500,000, which was telegraphed to all the papers from 
Harrisburg and it was understood to reflect the views of Sen- 
ator Quay. 

"Immediately the entire Quay machine began to create a 
sentiment to cut the school appropriation. This was by 
much effort outgeneraled by Eepresentatives Young and 
Smith, of Tioga, who secured the written pledges of 133 mem- 
bers of the House to oppose the cut, and the publication of 



24 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

the list of names in the city papers settled the question. A 
calculation of how the reduction proposed by Chairman Elkin 
would affect Lancaster county shows you would have lost of 
your school moneys $81,036,87 if this scheme had gone 
through. As it was, when the general appropriation bill was 
.reported on June 30 from the Senate appropriation commit- 
tee, composed entirely of Quay men, the school appropriation 
was reduced from $11,000,000 to $10,000,000, your share of 
loss being $27,012, which you would have had to raise by 
taxation or impair your schools. 

"The people are right to be sensitive on this subject. It was 
a question between schools and saloons — ^books and breweries 
— and beer won. The Quay people had agreed to protect the 
brewers and they killed the Bliss beer bills. 

"The docket of the Legislature is too long to be taken up 
and disposed of in any one night's speech, even to so patient 
an audience as that in the court room to-night. 

"The whole system of collecting the personal tax moneys 
and sending the whole of them to the State Treasury to lie 
there until the Treasurer is ready to pay the 75 per cent, back 
again is wrong. The bill was drawn in the interest of politi- 
cians and for political purposes. 

A QUESTION FOR TAXPAYERS. 

"Why should you send the entire personal tax to the State 
Treasurer when three-fourths of it belong to your county by 
law and is to be returned to your county again? 

"An infinite trouble to your localities you are obliged to 
tax yourselves to tide your schools over until State moneys 
come in, and thus you have interest to pay on borrowed 
money that you need not borrow if the State Treasurer would 
promptly pay what is rightly due to you. 

"To make matters worse, it is stated that there are not 
sufficient accommodations for the insane poor of our State 
in existing buildings. That on the stone floors and corridors 
of these buildings several thousand of the poor, chronic suffer- 
ers are scattered about in the most wretched way. The fail- 
ure to promptly pay appropriated money and provide proper 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 25 

places for the insane poor adopted by the State will soon turn 
the county poorhouses into madhouses. 

"I have said enough, perhaps, in one address to stir you to 
your best thinking towards a remedy. 

"We can only judge of the future by the past, and it is fair 
to assume that the political machine will do as much worse 
in the next five years as it has done in the past five years. 

"A large part of the six millions of Pennsylvanians are tired 
of the ring rule and unwilling to submit tamely to the sur- 
render of State affairs to Quay and W. H. Andrews. The 
State is too young to go out of business altogether for herself. 

"We are ready for another Declaration of Independence. 

"This does not mean that we take down our Eepublican flag 
and put up an Independent flag. It is only the cacklers of 
the machine that say that, to befog and mystify the unthink- 
ing. We must get out of a kitchen horizon and see large 
things through large hearts and clear eyes. I am a Eepubli- 
can of Republicans and from my boyhood to this day I have 
never, voted any other ticket. Of such there are thousands 
more than myself. Several hundred of them came together 
at the Bourse last month and believing this to be a free 
country and the home of the brave, expressed a desire that I 
should become a candidate for Governor. If they had stop- 
ped with that I might not have been here to-night, but they 
urged it so strongly and so persistently that I accepted their 
call. 

"I accepted a call asking me to be a candidate of the Ee- 
publican party before the Eepublican Convention. 

"I accepted no other call and have not been asked to accept 
any other. 

JOHN WANAMAKER'S REPUBLICANISM. 

"I am a better Eepublican than the chairman of the State 
committee, who, when asked if he would support me if nomi- 
nated by the convention, said he did not know. 

"I did not want to be a candidate or 1 would have come into 
the field immediately when pressed to do so. But I waited a 
month hoping that the leaders would listen to the voice of 



26 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

their comrades calling not for office but only to be heard — for 
the good of their party. If I had wanted to be an independ- 
ent candidate I would have waited nntil the party leaders 
clinched themselves beyond recall at the convention and then 
I could have anounced myself. I am not a party wrecker. 

QUAY REPUBLICANS AS TRAITORS. 

"The Philadelphia Shrievalty contest defeated a loyal Ee- 
publican at the last election by a notorious combination of 
Quay-Republicans and free silver Democrats and robbed Mc- 
Kinley of 30,000 votes, and they say — I don't know how true 
it is — that it was mostly done through Pennsylvania's Ee- 
publican national committeeman. Because I desire to be a 
party saver I take this stand in full time to prevent calamity 
sure to 'come if our entrenched leaders blindly pursue the 
course they have started on. 

"The Governor's chair need not be a source of rivalry. 

"Let all the Gubernatorial aspirants withdraw to either side 
of it while the people choose the man they want for Governor. 
If in response to the orders that have gone out many of the 
machine men at the last Legislature are t€) be dropped, why 
not order off the machine Governorship candidate? 

"Only to think of it! That we should be obliged to fight for 
the privilege of saying we will not have as a candidate for the 
highest office in the State a man slated for two years by the 
bosses. 

"We ask bread and they say you must take a stone. I am 
fighting against the total destruction of Pennsylvania Ee- 
publicanism. 

"Leiter and Armour have cornered the wheat market of the 
United States and the King of Pennsylvania has cornered the 
offices and the political power and these with the Legislature 
are busheled and barreled for spring and winter deliveries at 
conventions and to corporations as if all were wheat and oats. 

"One Senator owns another Senator and these control 
twenty-six Congressmen, who in a solid body train with the 
captain, or if any one fail the combination turns in against 
that man's re-election to Congress. 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 27 

"That old war horse of the party, the veteran, Congress- 
man-at-Large,GalushaA.Grow,"anwilliug to take orders, must 
give place to a new man whom it is said the orders have gone 
out to elect. This tightly bound up political ring in Pennsyl- 
vania is just as possible in other States. Take three such 
States and see where we are. It is a triumvirate next to om- 
nipotent. 

"Pennsylvania politics are ruled with an iron, rod and the 
bills are all paid by contractors and legislatively benefited 
interests. 

"Is Pennsylvania too blind to see the drift of the times, and 
too dull to see her large responsibility in bringing on this 
condition that may well make many people nervous and 
fearful ? 

"I have faith in the masses of the people. There, are times 
to listen to the quiet voter; sometimes he is only a tenth man; 
this time he is the every third man. 

"The old man, tired and disgusted with bossism, must step 
out and take up the war cry again. The young man who has 
concluded that politics is a hopeless task, must re-enter the 
ranks and do his best. Professional men and those who have 
stood aloof from politics, pronouncing the system as steeped 
in mud, must make it to their liking by association and 
service. 

"If party spectacles are too narrow, let us broaden them at 
least enough to see the public good. 

THE WANAMAKER PLATFORM. 

"The thing to be cared for above personal consideration is 
the right. With this conviction I enter for the war, not for 
one summer or one autumn or one winter or one year, but for 
all the years until Pennsylvania is redeemed and true to the 
traditions of Lincoln and Grant, who died for Republicanism 
and the country. 

"Malice and meanness and misrepresentation will not deter 
me. I shall turn the other cheek when one is cut too deep. 

"I think we shall be victorious. It does not follow that you 
should ever call me Governor; but if it comes about that I am 



28 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

elected I give you notice that I shall attend to the business of 
the State three hundred and thirteen days in the year and all 
day with as much devotion as I ever attended to my private 
affairs. What would I do? I would make the top of my 
official desk a map showing the sixty-seven counties of the 
State and study each one to promote its interest and prosper- 
ity. I would reduce the places and the salaries of all paid 
officers of the State to a minimum. I would find the way to 
make all the State money produce more than one and one- 
half per cent, interest. I would hope by lightening the ex- 
pense and collecting what may have been uncollectible dues 
to produce enough revenues without saddling the small busi- 
ness people of the State with additional taxes. 

STANDING UP FOR THE POOR MAN. 

"If anybody must pay more money to the State let the rich 
and prosperous pay and not the poor and struggling. I be- 
lieve there is money enough to go round if we husband what 
we have and give it out of the Treasury to whom it belongs at 
the time it is actually needed. 

"I believe it possible to increase the values of property 
throughout our State by a judicious measure designed to en- 
courage investments of capital in enterprises made possible by 
the new tariff. 

"With the Public Buildings at Philadelphia under my eyes 
for twenty-five years, that originally were to cost five millions 
and have already cost twenty millions, with another five mil- 
lions to be added for completion, I give you notice now that I 
will unalterably oppose inch by inch the wasteful use of money 
on a Capitol at Harrisburg, now starting^masked under an ap- 
propriation of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

"It is not now our business to give honors, places and 
salaries to the man simply because he says he wants it and 
manoeuvers for it. 

"It is true wisdom to find such as can bless the State with 
labors, with devotion for the real good of all the people and 
will give service at any sacrifice. Let every man go out of 
the way for such leadership. Can our senior Senator do a 



CURSE OF THE MACHINE. 29 

more patriotic thing at this point in the long career with 
which Pennsylvania has honored him than to help toward the 
higher level of good for all the people? 

READY TO STEP ASIDE. 

"I will be the first to step aside for the people's man. 

"Pennsylvania has not made an inch-step of real advance in 
good government for thirty years. She has talked about it, 
marched and countermarched under and over all sorts of plat- 
forms and pledges of reform and landed every time at the 
same old place. But for the heroic work of Governor Hast- 
ings and Attorney General McCormick she would have fallen 
far backward last year. 

"This is a year to begin a greater Pennsylvania. We will 
begin with the Governorship, and success must attend us be- 
cause we are right and the people insist on their rights. 

"We are here to-night to solemnly pledge and declare that 
no man shall have the right to govern us against our will. So 
say we all of us with a shout that shall echo from the rivers 
to the lakes. 

"There are two freedoms — the first where a man is free to 
do what he likes; the other where a man is free to do what he 
ought. 

"At the close of this meeting, that passes into history as one 
of the pivotal points of our lives, I stand here before you to 
say that I choose to do what I believe T ought to do. It is to 
do the one thing which the people call upon me to do. 

"I stand up alone your servant, untrammeled, absolutely 
the knowledge or assistance of even my closest friends, and I 
desire to give you now a most unqualified assurance that I am 
personally free from all political environments or claims. 

"Most unexpectedly I reached this determination without 
free and ready to serve the State if it needs me. God bless 
the Commonwealth!'^ 



30 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

STATE OFFICIALS DRAW TWO 
SALARIES. 



How the Bosses' Machine Rewards its Favorites. 

The State Treasurer and Auditor-General draw 

two Salaries unlawfully — William H. Andrews 

and his Lexow^ investigating record — How 

one man w^as paid $900 for doing 

nothing — The responsibility of 

Senator Quay. 



The newspaper correspondeiits who described the Wana- 
maker meeting at Ephrata, Lancaster County, on the night 
of March 18, 1898, spoke of it as "a great success and hun- 
dreds were turned away as it was impossible to get them in." 
On this night Mj*. Wanamaker spoke as follows: 

^'Two wars threaten the American people to-day — Spain 
and Quay. One is a national question, in which Pennsyl- 
vania is interested. The other is a Pennsylvania question 
in which the nation is interested. The United States cannot 
embark in war without involving Pennsylvania, and the Ee- 
publican party of Pennsylvania cannot engage in battle 
upon fundamental principles without involving the Eepub- 
lican party wherever it exists. Quay stands not as an indi- 
vidual. 1 have no quarrel with him personally, but as a 
representative of the State machine and defiant fortified 
leader of public affairs in our Commonwealth for the past 
twenty years, more or less. Spain must make an account- 
ing for our buried ship and entombed seamen — for the 
dignity of our flag. So also must Quay be brought to book 
— and this is the business before us to-night. Pennsylvania, 
anchored between the Blue Eidge and the Blue Sea, has 
been all unconscious of the hidden perils, worse than powder 
magazines to which her captain has steered her. Senator 
Quay is that captain — universally admitted and even boast- 
fully. To-day W. H. Andrews, formerly of Crawford, the 
county from which he was beaten out, and now of Allegheny, 
where for months past he has been laboring to launch a 
Stone frigate, is the mate and pilot, always on the captain's 



STATE OFFICIALS DRAW TWO SALARIES. 31 

bridge. This muoh. no one disputes — whatever be the subsi- 
dized newspaper denials, and Mr. Andrews' interviews with 
himself in newspapers, instructed, as we are informed in some 
cases, not to mention the name of Andrews in connection 
with W. A. Stone or Senator Quay. 

WHY THE BOURSE MEETING WAS HELD. 

''The fact, I say, is indisputable — that W. H. Andrews, the 
head, tail and middle of the Lexow investigating committee, 
and Senator Quay's pick of last winter of all the Legislature 
to head his political ways and means committee, is the con- 
troller-in-chief, under Senator Quay, of the political forces 
of Pennsylvania, whose iron rule is felt to the uttermost 
boundaries of our boss-ridden and boss-driven State. It is 
this condition of things that representative men of upwards 
of fifty counties of Pennsylvania met last month in the 
Bourse at Philadelphia to protest against. It was high time 
^for such a protest. No one need to apologize for that act. 
Neither is it necessary, as freemen of Pennsylvania, for you 
to explain to your neig'hbors why you attend the town meet- 
ing to-night at Ephrata to discuss public questions. It was 
the ghosts of the acts and attempted acts of the last Legis- 
lature that haunted the old Eepublican guards of Pennsyl- 
vania and sent them to Philadelphia, and close to Inde- 
pendence Hall, to make, sign and publish another declaration 
of independence. It was not only the nightmare of the 
narrow escapes of last winter's Legislature, but it is the 
never-absent fear of a Quay- Andrews Governor and a Quay- 
Andrews Legislature that urges men everywhere to earnest 
remonstrance. 

"Let it suffice for to-night to say that the citizens of this 
State have not had so much reason to repel an invasion of 
their rights since Stonewall Jackson, that September morn- 
ing, came over our garden wall as they have at this hour 
to head off the armies of office-holding politicians who seek 
to complete the capture of the State by owning the Governor, 
boots, breeches and brains. 

"Eef erring to the Legislature of '97, permit me to say that 
the audacious boldness exhibited by the Quay officials at 



32 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

Harrisburg, because of long-continued unrestraint, proves 
their belief that all who wear the stamp of the machine are 
guaranteed immunity from the law, and are safe from the 
displeasure of the people. 

DOUBLE PAY FOR STATE OFFICIALS. 

"This is evidenced by the fact that since 1895 the Auditor 
General and State Treasurer have each been drawing what 
is acknowledged to be unlawful salaries amounting to $1,200 
a year, as members of the Board of Public Accounts and 
Public Grounds and Buildings. Ki direct violation of the 
law, these items, together with one for $600, for Attorney 
General McCormick, who is also a member of the Board of 
Public Accounts, were inserted by the committee in the gen- 
eral appropriation bill of 1895. The Attorney General re- 
turned his warrant to the State Treasurer with indorsement, 
stating that he had no right under the law to receive any 
additional compensation for his services. Notwithstanding 
the opinion of so high an authority, the State Treasurer and 
Auditor General, as members of the same board, and as 
members of the Board of Public Grounds and Buildings, have 
drawn $1,200 annually. 

"At the last session of the Legislature these items were 
attacked by the anti-Quay men, and when the Quay chairman 
of the appropriations committee was asked to tell by what 
authority of law these self-apportioned salaries were inserted 
in the appropriation bill, he admitted that he knew of no 
authority whatever. His admission defeated both items 
when the bill was on second reading in the House, but they 
were re-inserted in conference committee, and finally passed 
at the last hour of the session, when but few, even of the 
courageous dared take the chances of opposing the bill. 

"And in the face of all the recent agitation, with the tax- 
payers aroused as they have never been aroused before, these 
officials are withholding moneys from your county that are 
long past due, and are giving out statements of deficits, while, 
with the aid of the machine, they each are paying to them- 
selves unlawfully at least two salaries from the State Treas- 
ury which I here refer to. 



STATE OFFICIALS DRAW TWO SALARIES. 33 

"For the payment of salaries of officers of the Senate and 
the House two items in the general appropriation bill alone 
were padded more than $25,000. Every dollar* was to be 
paid upon a mysterious list of political supernumeraries, who 
performed no service whatever to the State, and who visited 
Harrisburg only w*hen necessary to draw their pay. Some 
of them kept in hiding from the newspaper correspondents 
until they slunk away with checks in their pockets. They 
ought to send the money back to the Treasury, as they per- 
formed no service for it. 

. THE NOTORIOUS INDEMNITY BOND. 

"Members of the ^Seventy-six' opposed these items at every 
step; they presented a list 'of all officers and employees, with 
total amount of legal salaries, and called upon the Quay 
leaders to explain what the additional $25,000 was intended 
for, but no explanation was offered. Yet, under orders, the 
items were passed for these illegal payments, and would have 
been paid but for the veto of the Governor. 

"The persistent battle waged by the ^Seventy-six' scared the 
State Treasurer, and, to guard against personal loss, he refused 
to pay money on the bogus lists unless amply protected, with 
good reason, fearing they might fail to -pass. His demand 
for some security brought to Harrisburg from Washington 
two of Pennsylvania's national representatives, and there 
at night, under direction of the master genius, was drawn 
and signed the notorious "indemnity bond," the discovery of 
which forced the retirement from the Governor's Cabinet 
of his Secretary of State, and from the Attorney- General's 
office the chairman of the State Eepublican orga^nization. 
The bond, I am told, also bore the signature of one of 
your highest national representatives and officers of the 
Senate and House and others. Some of the high officials of 
the State and its Republican State committee had the au- 
dacity to defend the making of the indemnity bond. This 
was the boldest thing that bold men ever atttempted. 

HOW HE GOT 1900.00. 
"To more clearly show the character of the contemplated 
steal, and the conscienceless daring of the "Treasury looters'* 



34 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

in November last at Pottsville, Schuylkill county, in a libel 
case, Jonathan Jones, a resident of that county, swore that 
his name had been placed upon the padded legislative pay- 
roll, at the last session of the Legislature, by Senator Coyle, 
who had secured power of attorney and had drawn $900 for 
alleged services, although it is stated that Senator Coyle 
knew he (Jones) had not been in Harrisburg a single day 
during the session. The same people who say we are trying 
to destroy the party are planning to re-elect a State chair- 
man, who, within twelve months, was dismissed from high 
office because of his confessed connection with a conspiracy 
to take unlawfully from the State Treasury a large sum of 
money. I stand before you as a Eepublican proud of my 
party's history, and jealous of her future, but let me warn 
you, my fellow Eepublicans, if the party bosses in Pennsyl- 
vania insist on again placing at the head of the State Re- 
publican organization a man repudiated by a Republican 
administration because of participation in a Treasury raid, 
they are courting destruction, and. certainly planting a 
wrecking mine. 

"Lancaster county played a noble part last winter in the 
hotly contested battle against the bosses through the valiant 
leadership of C. C. Kauffman, your Senator. One of the 
fiercest battles ever fought on Pennsylvania soil was at Har- 
risburg when the Andrews Lexow investigating expense ac- 
count was presented and pushed for payment. Then it was 
that Senator Kauffman treated the State to cold facts in 
his brilliant speech. He marshaled only plain, naked facts — 
that the Andrews committee, packed to down Quay adver- 
saries, had met 57 times and held sessions averaging 2 hours 
and 25 minutes each, and that the cost to be saddled on the 
State was $65,980.96, or upwards of $1,157 a session for an 
attendance averaging not less than 4 or more than 5 men, or 
$485.72 for each hour the committee was in session. Ten 
thousand dollars were charged for stenographers, or over 
$71 an hour more than the wages of a normal school pro- 
fessor for a month of days and nights of 24 hours each. 
Why did this investigating committee incur an expense of 
more than $65,000, to be paid out of a Treasury that they 



STATE OFFICIALS DRAW TWO SALARIES. 35 

claim has a deficit and that must be made up by imposing 
additional taxes upon you? By the call of 400 of your citi- 
zens in town meeting assembled and encouraged by many 
hundreds of callers and letters from the various sections of 
the State I have become a candidate for Grovernor. 

"There is at least one man against me and that is myself. 
Incredible as it may seem to you the man that stands before 
you does not want to be Governor. I am not second to any 
man in appreciation of the honor, but, like a farmer who 
has been plowing for forty years with one plow, I prefer the 
old employment unless I can choose for myself. 

WANAMAKER'S FIGHT FOR PURE GOVERNMENT. 

''I have been talking for two years about better government 
in our State, and when these men of the Bourse meeting 
stood up and called me there was but one answer I could 
justly make. I put it all before you in my letter of accept- 
ance. I am an out-and-out Republican from away back, and 
shall be a Republican candidate for Governor if I live until 
the second day of June next, unless halted by a Republican 
meeting such as called me into the field. In plain English, 
I have simply walked through the one door that was opened 
to me, and that is all there is about it now. 

"I have said that I would fight all summer, with the autumn 
and winter thrown in. So I shall. It may be said that before 
I would withdraw from the contest it would be necessary 
to allow me to select the man for the ticket. No such 
thing! I do not care a straw who the man is if he is of the 
stripe of the true patriot and not a machine-made candi- 
date. It is for the people, and the people alone, to say whom 
they want. 

"Absolutely, I decline now and for the future to make any 
expression as to which of our good men shall be chosen. I 
mean only to insist on the type of the man, that he shall be 
one who will keep the balance level between all men." 



36 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEE. 

ROTTEN BANKS AND TRUST 
COMPANIES. 



What Rotten Politics had to do with the Crash of 
the People's Bank and the Guarantors' Finance 
Company — How a United States Senator 
Lobbied at Harrisburg for a Decaying 
Trust Concern — Quay's Specu- 
lation with State Money. 
A» State Treasury 
Story. 



On tlie night of April 2d Mr. Wanamaker addressed a large 
meeting at Conshohocken, Montgomery County. His text 
Avas "Eotten Banks and Rotten Politics." A few words on 
the impending crisis with Spain were his introduction. Then 
he entered with great vigor into the discussion of State issues, 
with broken banks and the management of the State Treasury 
as his text. The failure of the Chestnut Street Bank, and the 
more recent collapse of the People's Bank, and the suicide of 
its cashier, were touched upon. These banks held deposits 
of State funds amounting to over $700,000 when they failed. 

"The banks must supply a large part of the capital with 
which business is carried on in our city," he said. "Often 
when credit is jarred by unworthiness and bad management 
of affairs wages cease, because the banks lose faith and decline 
to lend their money to assist enterprises. At the present time 
the whole city is aghast with the revelations of the four bank- 
rupt corporations that have struck two men dead and buried 
in confusion hosts of others. 

"The taxes paid by you and others for your schools, chari- 
ties and State maintenance have to nearly a million gone 
down in the wreck, only to be recovered by the assessment of 
derelict directors and trustful stockholders. One of the 
officers of the People's Bank, President McManes, steps for- 
ward manfully and bravely to make good the State deposits. 
Why should he do that? Why he alone, as if he were at 
fault more than others and the only one able to pay for his 
own faults and others? But for him where would you look 



ROTTEN BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES. 37 

to-night for your State money deposited in the People's 
Bank? 

"In referring to the conditions of peril for our State 
moneys, I spoke at Lancaster of the People's Bank a week 
hefore the bank failed. I have been blamed. Jby some for pre- 
cipitating this failure. Is it not high time that we should be 
looking for the money that you paid in taxes that is scattered 
around in the favored depositories throughout the State, 
which by rights should not be there at all, but in the hands 
w^here it rightfully belongs, doing the good for which it was 
appropriated? 

"The cause of the collapse of these four banks and trust 
companies may be put down to scrofulous politics. Even the 
political pull to drag in millions of taxpayers' money for the 
benefit of We, Us & Oo., the favored of the State machine 
politics, was insufficient. Nobody can make an empty bag 
stand up, is an old and true proverb. 

A UNITED STATES SENATOR AS A LOBBYIST. 
"The Guarantors' Finance Company, though much younger 
in years, seemingly possessed of the progressive spirit of the 
day, has accomplished in five years what it took the People's 
Bank more than a score of years to do, namely, to empty its 
treasury and close its doors, with more than half a million of 
dollars' deficit. The intimate relations existing between 
these two institutions, as shown by the disclosures that have 
followed their failure, should surprise no one, as the same 
political friendship, the same dangerous relations, the same 
baneful influences and the same daring men were the controll- 
ing power around and within both institutions. How closely 
the interests of the Guarantors' and the State political 
machine are allied is shown by recalling a single incident that 
occurred at the last session of the Legislature, when during 
one of the most critical periods in the nation's history a United 
States Senator left his post at Washington and went to Har- 
risburg, where, for a night and a day he lobbied to pass what 
was known as the infamous Guarantors' Insurance bill, which 
was intended to give this insolvent company the right to 
amend its own charter by a vote of its directors; to change its 



38 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

l^lan and classes of insurance without authority of the State 
Insurance Department, thereby placing it beyond the juris- 
diction of the State insurance ofhcials, and making this paT- 
ticular company unanswerable to the protective insurance laws 
of the State. * 

"From the Speaker^s room this United States Senator 
directed the fight for the Guarantors' bill. While the House 
was in session he summoned members to him, and on political 
and personal grounds urged them to vote for the iniquitous 
measure. Every branch of the State political machine, under 
his direction, was put in motion — requests, promises and 
threats were freely used. But, notwithstanding all these, the 
Guarantors' bill, as it then was, that would have rendered it 
next to impossible to terminate the reckless business of this 
concern, that would have shielded the friends of the Senator 
who are now in peril, was defeated by the efforts of. the anti- 
Quay forces in the House kno^vn as the ^Seventy-six.' 

"The wrecking of the People's Bank and the Guarantors' 
Company eliminates but tAVO of the many political planets 
which revolve around the State Treasury as their solar centre, 
in a constellation of dangerous agencies, controlled to furnish 
the sinews of political warfare that aid to perpetuate the Quay 
machine. Could the veil of secrecy that has concealed the 
inner workings of the State Treasury for twenty years be torn 
aside, could the people see piled before them the millions of 
dollars of interest money that has been lost to them, could 
they know the facts of the alleged reckless speculations un- 
lawfully carried on by politicians with their money, could 
they realize that the political slavery in Pennsylvania to-day 
has its head-waters in a political and boss-manipulated State 
Treasury, they would then realize what has been the fountain- 
head of Quayism and of the streams of corrupt politics that 
have spread over our State. 

"The oft-repeated attempts to honestly investigate the 
conduct of the State Treasury have failed, and the almost 
constant suspicion and attack has found every avenue closed 
that might lead to a knowledge of how the State money was 
being handled. Only once in twenty years has i. State Treas- 



ROTTED BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES. 39 

urer been elected that Quay did not own politically, and but 
once in all these years have we had a glimpse of the methods 
employed. Samuel Butler was elected State Treasurer in 
1879, as an anti-machine man, and upon the examination of 
the accounts of State Treasurer Noyes, preparatory to his 
taking office, he (Butler) found due bills, orders and worthless 
securities amounting, it is alleged, to several hundred thous- 
and dollars, which he refused to receive as good assets. The 
story has been told in the New York Evening Post and 
several other metropolitan journals, and never yet has been 
denied, of how Quay, the political boss, and Cashier of the 
State Treasury Walters speculated in stocks with money be- 
longing to the State Treasury and substituted practically 
worthless securities for cash they had used; of how the ap- 
proaching time for Treasurer-elect Butler to take his seat 
rendered it necessary to make good a shortage of what is com- 
monly reported to be $300,000; of how an exposure was im- 
minent, when a friend came to the rescue and raised the 
money. The details of all this were known to but few until 
long after. Walters, before he died, wrote a letter telling all. 

A TREASURY OFFICIAL A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE. 

"During the administration of Henry K. Boyer, as Treas- 
urer, who is now Superintendent of the Mint, a threatened 
investigation forced his chief clerk to leave the country, and 
he is to-day a fugitive from justice. The State was saved 
from loss, it is alleged, by the liberal contributions from cor- 
porations and individuals who have long since received their 
reward by favorable legislation, secured through the influence 
of the machine. 

"At the last session of the Legislature to prevent an honest 
investigation of the management of the State Treasury a 
Quay committee was appointed to make a fake investigation, 
which it did, and reported the management for the past 
twenty years faultless, and especially complimented the pres- 
ent official and reported every dollar properly accounted for, 
yet a few weeks later the notorious ^indemnity bond' expose 
disclosed the fact that the State Treasurer had unlawfully 



40 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

paid the money on the $25,000 padded pay-roll, and on the 
last night of the session the State Treasurer and his friends 
were on the floor of the House appealing to members to pass 
an appropriation bill for $10,000 to reimburse the Treasurer 
for money unlawfully advanced months before the appoint- 
ment of the investigating committee to Sergeant-at-Arms 
Ilarrah, Quay's confidential friend. 

'^Were I the State Treasurer, with one uncertain prop be- 
tween me and loss from a national bank, known for a year or 
more to be in the quicksands, and with one noble-hearted but 
ill and aged man standing pathetically in the breach of the 
other trusted institution, I would be in haste to look after all 
the other moneys on deposit belonging to the State. I have 
by me no list of the places or amounts, or of the men respons- 
ible for their management, or to whom they have loaned the 
money, but I would surely and without delay at least satisfy 
myself that I could get it when wanted; but the fact is, I 
would not lose an hour in scattering it over the State to per- 
form the mission for which it was collected. Pennsylvania 
does not so much want interest on State deposits as she wants 
safety and straight-forward dealing with all public moneys. 

"What a month Philadelphia has passed through — with its 
Councilmanic clouds and broken bankers! 

"Five days ago a stanch Eepublican newspaper said: ^Rot- 
ten politics and rotten business have gone hand-in-hand in 
the failure of the People's Bank.' From the beginning this 
bank has been in politics, and rotten politics. It was organ- 
ized by politicians for politicians. It stood for a corrupt com- 
bination between corporations, politicians and public officers. 
All its profits did not come from this, but a very large share 
did. It has always had ^influence.' It has always profited 
by it. Organized by an ex-State Treasurer, it has always had 
State funds. It has held city funds. It has held other 
^funds.' It was a clearing house for personal profit, some 
doubtless legal and some not; but none would bear the light 
of day. Politicians brought their personal effort to this 
scheme for profit. Public officers brought the public money 
entrusted to them. The bank received it, dealt in it, profited 



ROT TEH BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES. 41 

by it and divided the spoils. By law this is legal. It is sanc- 
tioned by long custom. None the less it is wrong. Public 
money is a public trust. If there is interest on it the State 
should have it. If there is a profit in its deposit the taxpayer 
should get the benefit of it. Any other course is morally, if 
not legall}^ a diversion of public money to private profit. 
These examples are contagious; weak men will not improve 
on an ill example, and the result is the ruin of a bank, the loss 
of life and a reputation more precious than life and another 
deadly blow to business confidence. These blows are inevit- 
able as long as rotten politics exist in this State. If the State 
Treasury is made the centre of a great network of operations 
under which the interest on State money is divided between 
banks and politicians, some banks are sure to be rotten. They 
cannot share in this legalized iniquity, sanctioned though it 
be by law, without suffering for it. The whole commu.nity 
suffers. The gigantic political machine which taps the State 
Treasury, the banks and big corporations, and which divides 
and distributes the spoils of all three between public officers, 
politicians, political workers and corrupt voters is not merely 
a political scandal; it is a rotten moral wrong which destroys 
all concerned. 

"Bribery develops in Councils. Banks break. Corporations 
like the Guarantors' prove mere swindles. Men once honest 
sink into personal corruption and end in suicide. There is 
only one cure for the long, msmal, disastrous examples of this 
which Philadelphia has endured for a generation — clean poli- 
tics. Unless the pohtical machine and combination which 
makes these things possible can be smashed they will go on 
indefinitely, debauching the community and injuring honest 
trade by the shock to public confidence.'' 

"Very pertinently the outside world is looking on and ask- 
ing what Pennsylvania is going to do about it." 

TAXPAYERS MUST ASSERT THEMSELVES. 

"The people need only to rouse themselves to shake off the 
fetters forged by time and a merciless, self-serving ring. We 
are approaching a Gubernatorial and Legislative election, and 
whether we have a Cuban war or not on the high seas, you 



42 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

will be here to pay taxes and be governed. No free govern- 
ment can exist without elections. The kind of government 
we have depends on our intelligence and the interest we take 
in selecting those who levy and spend the taxes. I cannot 
tax you to-night with a recital of the wrongs undertaken by 
the last Legislature — defeated in part by the valiant 76, and 
the faithfulness of the Governor in applying the veto power. 
Let the slated candidate of the ring come into power at the 
next election and you shall have the bosses owning the Gov- 
ernor's mansion and the new Capitol. Contractors will furn- 
ish a lot less of building, but a large lot of money for political 
purposes. 

"The City Hall at Philadelphia and its contracts and costs 
is an object lesson for you. 

"The padded pay-rolls, the new taxation proposed, the re- 
imbursement of the Lexow and mileage committees that were 
headed off last year will call next time upon you and you will 
have no remedy. 

"Do you like the prospect? Are you pleased to be led 
about in the Andrews-Quay chain gang on the promise of a 
place or a pass on the railroad? If you are not getting any- 
thing out of your servitude you are not as smart as the others 
who do, and they laugh at you while they enjoy their innings. 

"'Bushels of railroad passes are constantly being distributed 
by the steam railroads by the hands of the politicians to their 
friends who vote the way the railroads want them to vote. 
And this going on in open day and known to thousands, and 
the inter-State commerce law notwithstanding. Let me con- 
clude with a word or two personal to myself. I accepted the 
call of the Bourse conference to become a candidate of the 
Republican party for Governor, though I have no wish to be 
Governor. I am simply offering myself for your use to break 
the slate of the bosses and to get a man for Governor accept- 
able to the people who want to throw off the yoke of the 
machine. I want to see the State start anew out of the wild- 
erness into a land of hope and prosperity. You can elect your 
own Governor and you can elect your own Legislature and be 
your own masters — ^if you will." 



A ISTAB AT THE FARMERS. 43 

A STAB AT THE FARMERS. 



The Pure Butter Interests to be Sacrificed — How the 

Quay Machine planned to strike every Farmer 

and Dairyman in the State — A proposition 

to permit the sale of Oleomargerine 

to save the Brewers from higher 

taxation — The W^anamaker 

men defeated it. 



The Opera House at Towanda, Bradford County, could 
not hold all the people who came to hear Hon. John Wana- 
maker on the night of April 4th tell how the Quay machinists 
tried to sacrifice the farmers of Pensylvania to save the beer 
brewers. This is what he said: 

"My visit to your town to-night is to speak to you on the 
great issues of State that face us in the next elections. I 
wish that you could separate me from any other personal 
interest in this movement more than any other citizen. 
When I was here last and spoke to you^within a few weeks 
of the Senatorial election I take you to witness that I never 
opened my lips on that subject. Now that I am here, called 
out by the representatives of the Republican party from 
fifty-five counties of the State to be a standard-bearer for 
Governor, I am here to represent a deep, settled antagonism 
to the juggernaut of Republicanism — the Quay machine — 
rather than to invoke anything personal to myself. 

"That meeting at the Philadelphia Bourse was a Repub- 
lican meting, not under the cd\^er of darkness or disguise, 
but in the open day for the public good. It was not rebellion 
or revolution, provided the leaders of the party will awaken 
in time from their intoxication of power and shameful poli- 
tics. No party ever fell so far from its high level as the 
Republican party of Pennsylvania. To-day it is buried deep 
in broken pledges, sold-out reforms, combinations with cor- 
porations to control primary conventions and elections, and 
for assaults upon the Treasury, speculations with State 
money and other reckless, shameless schemes to rob the 
people of the State, 



44 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

''Never in the history of any Commonwealth was there 
deeper plotting and more wicked determination to raid a 
State treasury and thus impose heavier tax upon a people 
than was witnessed in the Pennsylvania Legislature last 
winter. 

NEWSPAPERS PAID TO SUPRESS THE NEWS. 

"There were two unyielding and unstormable bulwarks. 
The gallant "Seventy-six" and the Governor's veto. You 
do not know about this? I am not surprised. Many of our 
State newspapers are paid in money and by promises of office 
to shut out everything damaging to the ringsters. How 
could you know when their schemes are carefully kept out 
of the papers? When certain things must be published as 
news in the Quay organs it is done like a colored photo- 
graph, placing in most favorable light all the defects and 
the blurs of the picture. These very organs, spurred on by 
the chairman of the Republican State Committee, even 
claimed credit for the passage of the bill compelling the pay- 
ment by banks of interest on State deposits. 

"Fellow-citizens, you should know every one of the rocks 
past which the 'Seventy-six' steered you safely in the cor- 
rupt Legislature of last year. But the machine does not 
want you to know these things. The only way to get these 
things before the people is at a town meeting like this. If 
I could control the matter I would have every hall and 
church and schoolhouse open every night until the conven- 
tion meets in June. I would discuss measures and men, can- 
didates and ckpitol building. 

"Let me enumerate briefly a few things that the arrogant 
bosses of the Republican party in the last Legislature tried 
to accomplish to the injury of the whole people of the State. 
I say a few things, for the complete list would make in the 
mere mention several columns of county newspapers. 

"First, it endeavored to reduce the school funds $1,000,000. 
This would have meant a loss of $28,000 in round numbers 
to you, men of Bradford County, every two years. 

"The growing demand for money mth which to run the 
State Government led to an investigation of the subject of 



A STAB AT THE FARMERS. 45 

taxation^ and at the last session of the Legislature bills were 
introduced increasing the rate of taxation in various direc- 
tions and imposing a direct tax on the products of the 
breweries of the State. 

"This latter proposition immediately met with the most 
vigorous opposition from the Quay machine, and orders were 
given that under no circumstances should an additional tax 
on beer or other malt liquors be imposed. It was pointed 
out, howcv'er, by the Governor, that more money must be 
raised annaally or the appropriations to charitable and other 
institutions must be cut down. 

FAKMEllS CHOSEN AS THE VIOTBIS. 

"Then it was that the fertile brain of Mr. Marshall, chair- 
man of the Appropriations Committee, one of Mr. Quay's 
closest friends and his mouth-piece suggested a scheme that 
would relieve the machine of the odium of cutting down 
funds for charitable and State institutions, the hospitals and 
asylums to save the breweries. In the struggle between the 
brewery and the schoolhouse Mr. Marshall decided to aim 
a blow at every farmer in the State. He did not decide to 
do it, however, until he had seen Mr. Quay and obtained his 
consent, and subsequent events proved that Senator Quay 
v/as with him heart and soul in this movement. 

"Mr. Marshall proposed a tax on oleomargarine that would 
raise a revenue anywhere from $500,000 to $1,200,000 per 
annum at the expense of the great dairy interests of Penn- 
sylvania. You farmers will understand it when I say that 
it was proposed at one legislative sweep to permit the whole- 
sale manufacture and sole of bogus butter in competition 
witli the dairies of Bradford County, and of every other 
county in the Commonwealth, just so the bogus butter paid 
a tax of one or two cents per pound. The manufacturers 
of oleomargarine jumped at the opportunity to put their 
products, millions of pounds of it, in Pennsylvania, and they 
urged the passage of the bill. 

"That measure proposed by Mr. Marshall meant that the 
Quay machine, to save the beer brewers from paying a fair 
and just tax, was willing to sacrifice the farmers of the State, 



46 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

but the representatives at Harrisburg of the agricultural in- 
dustry rebelled. The opposition came mainly from the 
'Seventy-six/ and so the proposition to save the brewers by 
sacrificing the farmers was reluctantly abandoned. 

"But the brewers had been liberal contributors to the fund 
used in the election of machine officials, and the agreement 
that they should not be taxed by the Legislature was still 
in force. Then it was that Senator Mitchell, of Jefferson 
County, presented the general appropriation bill, formulated 
by a committee under the domination of the Quay machine, 
in which the appropriation for the public schools was cut 
down $1,000,000. 

"Fellow citizens, it was a magnificent struggle. It was the 
brewery against the red schoolhouse, it was the scheming 
politician against the people. If for no other reason than 
this, that the Quay machine tried to save the brewer by 
sacrificing the schoolboy, it should be doomed to swift and 
lasting condemnation by the people. 

"They failed in their nefarious plans and the 'Seventy-six' 
aided by the honest men in that Legislature, put the brand 
of shame upon the scheme and it fell, as it deserved to fall, 
and ihe schoolhouse triumphed." 



SAMPLES OF OFFICIAL JOBBERY. 

Enormous Overcharges mad:; for Work done under 

Shadow of Schedule Prices — One Printing Bill 

as a Sample — The Quay Cry to the Party 

to stand up for Harmony a Fraud 

and Sham — The People Must 

Know the Facts. 



Mr. Wanamaker's speech before a crowded Opera House 
at Williamsport on April 5th dealt with official jobbery 
largely. He spoke briefly about the threatening war and 
then continuing said: 

"But, my friends, the words I have spoken are only inci- 
dents of my visit. Ivike the peddler who comes into your 



SAMPLES OF OFFICIAL JOBBERY. 47 

homes, I am only now unstrapping the basket of things I 
want to show you. 

"One of the thirteen old colonial States is in revolt. Like 
the earthquake in San Francisco a week ago, that wrecked 
houses and shook buildings to their foundations, the old 
Commonwealth rumbles with murmurs of discontent, and 
shakes with anger and mortification at the long continued 
perpetrations of wrong and deceit of fraud and infamy on 
the part of political bosses who have captured the Common- 
wealth. This meeting to-night is one of the many in our 
State which declares our fixed and unflinching purpose to 
throw off the bondage of the old overbearing and iniquitous 
machine that has wrought so much evil to our Common- 
wealth. 

"I will not permit you to call me less of a Eepublican be- 
cause I dare refuse obedience any longer to William H. 
Andrews and Senator Quay in their reckless purpose to slate 
their subservient friends, speculate in office and manipulate 
the taxpayers' money. It is not Eepublicamsm to wear a 
ring through your nose. It is not self-respecting in Repub- 
licans to be deaf and dumb and walk along with the party 
hand-in-hand with shoplifting politicians, while they lay 
their hands upon all that is in sight, and carry it off for 
their favorites who do their bidding at elections. The Re- 
publican party of Pennsylvania, save such as are in office 
or have the promise of it, the contractors and those other- 
wise subsidized, almost all of the once great, healthy organi- 
zation stands with furred tongue, sick of the grip of the 
monster boss and begging for relief. It asks relief, not next 
year or after one more term, but now, this summer. 

"I state a fact that will be amply demonstrated within the 
next thirty days, when I say that the people of Pennsyl- 
vania have not the slightest conception of the extent to 
which official corruption and jobbery have crept into the 
politics of Pennsylvania. Men do not scruple to violate 
solemn pledges and then oaths to accomplish their purpose. 
I call your attention very briefly to one case that I am in- 
formed is a matter of record at Harrisburg, the points here 



48 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEK. 

given can be verified by an appeal to the records in the office 
of the Attorney General at Harrisburg. 

A BIT OF OFFICIAL JOBBERY. 

"One year ago a former clerk in the Eepublican State 
headquarters, and I believe subsequently a clerk in the 
office of the State Treasurer, was awarded the contract for 
the State printing for a term of four years, at a bid of 
81 1-100 per cent, below the maximum price. The next 
highest competitor was 1-100 of a cent above him. The 
successful bidder, Mr. W. Stanley Ray, began his work July 
1, 1897, and early in September of last year, filed an account 
of three months' work, amounting, it is alleged, to between 
$11,000 and $12,000. By direction of Governor Hastings, 
State Superintendent of Printing Robinson submitted this 
bill to the Attorney Generars Department before approving 
it. Deputy Attorney General Reeder went over the bill care- 
fully and found that Mr. Ray had overcharged the State to 
an amount, said to exceed $7,600. The Deputy Attorney Gen- 
eral filed an opinion to this effect on the 28th of December 
last, and the finding was approved by the Attorney General 
and Governor. 

"I am informed that in one item alone, the State Printer, 
a friend of Senator Quay's, and one of his political workers, 
overcharged the State $6,420. On another bill the over- 
charge was said to be $743, on another $257 and still another 
of $186. These items were stricken from the bill by Super- 
intendent Robinson, by direction of Governor Hastings, after 
which a warrant was issued to Mr. Ray by the Auditor Gen- 
eral for the amount of his claim, less the overcharges indi- 
cated. 

THE PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW THE FACTS. 

"Here is presented one of the remarkable methods employed 
by Senator Quay's friends in the conduct of the State affairs 
and the disposition of the people's mo-ney. In other words, 
if my information is correct, over sixty per cent, of this bill 
was unjust, to use no harsher expression. The people of 
Pennsylvania must understand these matters of detail to 



SAMPLES OF OFFICIAL JOBBERY. 49 

see just liow far the trail of machine corruption and political 
debauchery extends into the workings of our State depart- 
ments. 

^^The most specious plea that is being put forth by the 
Quay machine and its camp followers is for harmony in the 
party. Urged on by the fears of Senator Quay, they are 
going up and down the State appealing to honest men and 
good Republicans for harmony. It is the old deceptive cry 
and I call you to witness to-night that every last one of these 
men want harmony upon their own terms by putting their 
own people on guard. They cry that war is impending; that 
tariff issues are at stake; that financial questions are to be 
settled and thus demand that anti-Quay men fall into their 
snare through fear of results at Washington. The machine 
knows to-day that it is standing upon a volcano, and by this 
process of political threats they expect to frighten or cajole 
the dreaded ajiti-Quay forces into the support of corrup- 
tionists and their tools. Do not be deceived and do not enter 
into unholy cojitracts with representatives of the worst ele- 
ment that ever controlled Republican politics in the State 
of Pennsylvania. 

WILLIAM A. STONE AS QUAY'S ALLY. 

''The old machine says to every self-respecting Republican: 
'If you pen your mouth to discuss the affairs and decision 
of the ring you are a kicker.' The old motto used to be 
'Addition, Division and Silence.' It is now, in these latter 
days, 'Silence, Servility, and School Money Speculations.' 
They say that all they want is to be let alone. That is what 
Jeff Davis said also. We are approaching a Gubernatorial 
convention and election.' It is alleged on his behalf that 
William A. Stone, the under cover candidate of Andrews and 
Quay, is an old soldier. All honor to the*old soldiers, but 
there are qualifications demanded for the office of Governor 
other than that of being an old soldier. When I wa5 Post- 
'master General I never failed to appoint an old soldier when- 
ever I had a place, but suppose ^hat I had put one in the 
dead letter office who could not read the illegible and half- 
defaced inscriptions on letters, would you have excused the 



50 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

delay in the return of your missent letters because the clerk 
was a soldier? 

"Mr. ^tone is Senator Quay's most faithful ally and sub- 
servient friend. It is this fact that disqualifies him for the 
office of Governor. No man, whether he be a Senator of 
the United States or the principal lobbyist of a Legislative 
session, who is interested in the passing of Lexow bills, and 
padded pay rolls must have control of a Governor who wields 
vetoes or passes upon legislation. 

"I have referred in former speeches to the infamous attempt 
of the Quay machine to cut down by $1,000,000 the appro- 
priation to our public schools. At the time of the failure 
of the Chestnut Street National Bank and of the People's 
Bank, in Philadelphia, in which there is still tied up over 
three-quarters of a million dollars of the people's money, your 
money and mine, that was subject to the check of the State 
Treasurer, this same Treasurer was claiming that there was 
not enough money to pay the school district moneys. Eight 
over in your neighboring county of Bradford, in Albany 
township, the School Directors have been borrowing money 
to pay the school teachers while these vast sums were lying 
idle in favored and rotten banks." . 

Mr. Wanamaker then read a tabulated statement showing 
that for the past four years the People's Bank of Philadelphia 
has held State deposits that averaged from one-fifth to one- 
third of all the money in the State Treasury, as shown by 
the monthly balances. In 1894, in May, June, July and 
August, the People's Bank had a State deposit of $1,178,104, 
while the monthly balances of the State Treasury ranged 
from five to six millions of dollars. 



JOFA^ WAN A MAKER AND LABOR. 5] 

JOHN WANAMAKER AND LABOR. 



A Reply to Political Attacks on Business Methods of 
His Firm — Some Malicious Falsehoods Nailed. 
Senator Quay's Friends the Bankers 
of Wall Street— His Official Acts 
always to Help the Corpo- 
rations and Trusts. 



Mr. AVanamSker changed the plan of his speech this Wed- 
nesday evening, April Gth, at Athens by taking up news- 
paper clippings handed him that were taken from an Athens 
paper. He then said: 

"Clippings of newspapers like these I have Just read have 
been sent out from Philadelphia to the country newspapers 
by the Andrews-Quay management, endeavoring to poison 
the working-men of the State against me by an effort to make 
it appear that I had imported foreign workmen who take 
the place of American laborers. To prove this charge, a 
single case in nearly forty years of our business is cited where 
my business house composed of John Wanamaker, Eobert 
C. Ogden, T. B. Wanamaker, and Eodman Wanamaker, doing 
business under the name of ^John Wanamaker/ was fined 
for employing a man contrary to law. 

"Let me say that I was never charged" personally of even so 
much as trying to evade any labor or importation law. While 
I am legally responsible as a member of a firm for all my 
firm does, as an individual and in my political views I stand 
for myself only. The case on which the firm of John Wana- 
maker was fined was during my absence in Europe. No papers 
were ever served upon me; I was not a witness in the case; in 
fact, I had no knowledge of the latter until long after the 
circumstance occurred. I would dismiss this matter here if 
it were not so apparent that the Andrews-Quay candidate 
for Governor, who dare not face you upon the real issues 
of this campaign — which are of broken promises and un- 
equal taxation, machine corruption, and legislative de- 
bauchery and dishonor — proposes to raise this irrelevant and 
false and misleading question to divert your attention from 



52 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WAN AM ARE K. 

vital issues, and because I wish to embrace this opportunity 
to emphasize the position that I have consistently maintained 
on the question of immigration for all my life. 

UNAUTHORIZED ACT OF A DEPARTMENT MAN. 

"The case in question hinged on two points: First, did the 
head of a department make a contract with a foreign work- 
man in violation of law? Second, had he authority from the 
firm to employ such workman? It is an inflexible rule of 
the firm of John Wanamaker that no one sli^ll be employed 
in any capacity whatsoever except by the head of the em- 
ployment department, and so strict is this rule that I myself 
have no authority to employ any one, and cannot do so ex- 
cept through that medium. 

"The man who instituted this suit against the firm brought 
a letter of introduction and recommendation to one of our 
buyers when in London. The man asked many questions 
about America — about the chances of securing employment 
and the possibilities of advancement. The buyer, an Eng- 
lishman by birth, took an interest in the man and persuaded 
him that no country afforded such opportunities as did 
America. Our buyer told the man that he could not guar- 
antee him employment, but would use his best efforts to assist 
him if he would come to Philadelphia. Through the in- 
fluence of the London house which introduced the man to 
our buyer, he loaned him the money to pay the man^s pass- 
age, and upon his arrival in Philadelphia made good his 
promise to assist him. 

"Without communicating the peculiar circumstances to our 
firm, our buyer, on his return from his visit to Europe, in- 
structed the man to apply for employment in the regular 
way. The applicant was given the same examination that 
all others are given, and answered every question satisfac- 
torily. His name was placed upon the eligible list. Soon 
after an opening for such a man was reported and he was 
given employment. 

TROUBLE STIRRED UP. 
"The man was recommended as a skilled laborer of a class 
that is unknown in America. But after a trial, while he 



JOWN WA^AMAKER AND LABOR. 53 

proved a competent workman, he showed himself to be a 
man of bad instincts, and was removed for insulting a lady 
customer. He refused to work in the new department to 
which he was assigned and left our employment; not, how- 
ever, until after he had attempted the worst kind of black- 
mail; appearing in person in our general office and demand- 
ing $200, or he would bring suit against our firm for the 
violation of the contract alien labor law, claiming for the 
first time that he had a contract with our silk buyer, though 
it was a year after he had entered our employ. As I learned 
afterward, for many weeks our firm was threatened with 
prosecution by certain irresponsible lawyers, unless we paid 
the man several hundred dollars. Of course, our firm re- 
fused. 

'''Suit was brought, to which our attorneys attached little 
significance, and much to their surprise, and wholly unknown 
to me, a verdict was given against our firm, and not until 
months after did it dawn upon any of our people that the 
prosecution could have been inspired by politics, and- that 
the prosecution of the case might not be accident, but the 
result of political methods, and solely for antagonistic politi- 
cal purposes. 

"This is viewing the case from the most unfavorable stand- 
point to our firm. Let us take the other view; that our 
buyer did employ this foreigner, and that he did pay his 
passage to America. This fellow was recommended as a 
skilled laborer, of a class unknown to the American trade; 
was said to have served an apprenticeship of many years — 
unlike the American salesman. He had picked pins and 
wound ribbon for a year. He had labored a term of years in 
a factory, and knew how every silk product was made. 

"He had learned tlie ladies' tailoring business. He was 
able to suggest harmonious and becoming colors, and to tell 
accurately the number of yards of a given width required 
for any style for a person of any size. He was a skilled and 
artistic window dresser; in fact, it was believed that he com- 
bined the learning of the manufacturer, the knowledge and 
taste of the dressmaker, the ability of the salesman, and the 
art of the window trimmer. To attain this proficiency re- 



54 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

quired a dozen years of plodding work, such as the Ameri- 
can salesman will not do. 

"But our silk buyer, believing he saw an opportunity to 
increase the efficiency of his department, did encourage this 
man to make Philadelphia his place of residence, and shaped 
things so that he became a salesman in his department, be- 
lieving that the smart, quick Yankee salesmen would learn 
from the Englishman in a few months all that it had taken 
him years to learn, thereby giving our salesmen the benefit 
of the P]ngiishman's experience and long term of apprentice- 
ship, without the years of drudgery, making our American 
salesmen more efficient, their services more valuable, and 
their wage-earning capacity greater. 

"Under the alien labor law our buyer could have made a 
contract with this man a;nd agreed to pay his passage to 
America, not as a pauper nor a common or unskilled laborer, 
but an artist in a new line. He did not come in any com- 
petition with any American workman, but was really an in- 
structor in a new field of work, secured for the education 
and betterment of every man employed in our silk depart- 
ment. 

FIRM'S GOOD RECORD WITH EMPLOYEES. 

"This is the only case where we have been fined for violat- 
ing the labor law in forty years. Upon the pay roll of our 
firm are nearly eight thousand people, whose wages range 
annually from $20,000 each to the boys at $250. We have 
employed in the past thirty years more than one hundred 
thousand persons, and have never had a strike nor a threat- 
ened strike. We are never obliged to seek workmen, but 
only to choose from the five thousand people who apply to 
our employment department for work every thirty days. It 
would be absurd to go abroad to hire salesmen when dozens 
apply daily who are acquainted in Philadelphia, with the 
manners and customs of the people, and who are therefore 
the most Successful salesmen and saleswomen. 

"Though we sell goods made in almost every country on 
the globe, we have never found it necessary to employ any 
but English-speaking people. Our house has for years main- 



JOHN WANAMAKER AND LABOR. 55 

tained a pension roll for aged and worthy employees; a. 
system of weekly benefits, absolutely controlled by the em- 
ployees themselves, to be paid in case of sickness or death, 
has paid more than one hundred thousand dollars. Em- 
ployees are allowed a discount, reducing the price of goods 
to cost. Length of service is rewarded by increase of salary, 
other things being equal. No young children are employed 
in any service in the house. Salesmen and others at times 
are allowed dividends in addition to their salaries. 

"A man or woman's nativity or creed are not made condi- 
tions for employment by our establishment, but only intelli- 
gence, integrity, and capability. A free school had been 
kept up for years among the younger employees to give them 
a commercial education. 

AN AMUSING FALSEHOOD. 

"That employees are searched before leaving the store is 
an amusing and desperate falsehood, and that they are com- 
pelled to patronize the house or its restaurant is another 
and ridiculous falsehood. I believe we pay the highest 
average wages paid by any large mercantile house in America, 
and for thirty-six years, since our business began, we have 
not defaulted an instant in the wages of our employees. 

"And I want to repeat what I have said many times before: 
the employment system and wage schedule of our store are 
now and have always been open for investigation; we have 
always accorded individuals who are interested in labor 
questions, and especially committees representing working- 
men's organizations, the fullest privileges and facilities to 
examine into our methods. 

"I would not dignify this charge with denial but for fear 
some well-meaning persons may be misled. It is so r "licu- 
lous. It would be as reasonable to say that Senator v^; ^-^ 
was guilty of murder, because a careless motorman on his 
street railway killed a passenger, or that the president of 
the Standard Oil Company or a stockholder in the Pennsyl- 
vania Kailroad Company was responsible for the raisdeeds 
of Senator Andrews, because he happened to be in the em- 
ploy of those corporations. This is not a campaign of per- 



56 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAEER. 

sonalities. I have no personal quarrel with Senator Quay or 
slated candidates of the machine. It is a battle against 
system, and if to-night I find it necessary to use personal 
names, it is because names best designate the systems they 
are responsible for and control. 

^'It is indeed strange that all these criticisms should be 
inspired by men who never employed a dozen men at one 
time, except to do political work; and that the head of a 
merciless political machine, who for twenty years has caused 
laws to be passed that have constantly encroached upon the 
rights and decreased the wages of the workingman, should 
be able to cajole and deceive intelligent labor men, is still 
more strange. 

"Workingmen, let us see what Senator Quay has done for 
you within th^ past twenty years, when he had it within his 
power to do so much. He has filled the statute books of 
Pennsylvania with laws giving to the great corporations your 
valuable franchises. He has so directed legislation that 
the privileges of corporations are well nigh absolute, while, 
their interests have been so w^ell protected that an unjust 
proportion of taxation falls upon the people. He has been 
piling the load of taxes and debt upon you, while millions 
of dollars of interest on your State money has been used to 
perpetuate his political machine. 

IN THE LAST LEGISLATURE. 

"At the last session of the Legislature his Senate com- 
mittee, under orders, killed the anti-trust bill, that would 
have made unlawful the combinations between persons and 
corporations to restrain trade or increase the price of pro- 
duct beyond a legitimate limit. He, with a half dozen col- 
lea ?•■ in the United States Senate, one year ago held up 
t^ . tariff bill for the benefit of the trusts of the country, 
while millions of dollars^ w^orth of foreign-made goods were 
being shipped to this country, and the smokeless chimney, 
the silent loom, and the unemployed thousands to-day bear 
witness to their work. 

"His friends are the bankers of Wall Street; his meeting 
place the private offices of the People's Bank; his confer- 



JOE:ti WANAMAKER AND LABOR. 57 

ences are held in the secret chambers of great corporations. 
He was forced to admit, under oath, that he was a speculator 
of sugar stock while the tariff bill was pending and while the 
sugar schedule was being made, and was one of the six 
United States Senators who dared declare for higher duties 
on sugar. 

''He named Leishman,of Pittsburgh, as Minister to Switzer- 
land, against the protests of all the State labor organizations, 
who had not forgotten his arbitrary methods in the Home- 
stead strike as Carnegie^s boss^ 

"He causes your schools' money to be withheld while you 
pay interest to banks for money to pay your teachers. 

"He causes the personal property tax to be withheld while 
your county issues bonds to pay debts which should be paid 
with money held back in the banks. 

"He plans indemnity bonds to take improper and dishonest 
advantage of the State Treasury to assist in carrying a pay 
roll for unauthorized employees. 

"He protects the mileage grabbers, and has committees ap- 
pointed on the pretense of helping the starving miners, and 
his committees rob while on mercy's mission. 

"He has attempted to take $1,000,000 from your public 
school to relieve the brewers from paying their share of the 
taxes. 

"I want to be just to Senator Quay and* give him all the 
credit due him. He did read in the United States Senate 
part of a large tariff speech that was prepared for him in 
Philadelphia. He threatened to read more, which forced 
a compromise. Broken pledges to all except the corpora- 
tions mark his political pathway, yet he still finds ways to 
favor corporations and to fool the workingmen. 

"This year he is trying a new scheme. He thinks he can 
win your vote for his slate candidate upon the issue of an 
immigration bill, a copy of which I hold in my hand. It is 
as honest as any claim they make, although, as a matter of 
fact, his slated candidate is the author of only the enacting 
clause, consisting of nineteen words, while the bill, I am re- 
liably informed, belongs to Senator Lodge, of Massachu- 
setts." 



58 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

W. A. STONE'S VIOLATED PLEDGES. 



He made a solemn Pledge to his Party to vote for 

McKinley for President and then violated it by 

voting for Quay — The documents in the 

case — Another Scheme of the Quay 

Ringsters to get $53,000 out 

of the State Treasury. 



Eoyersford, Montgomery Covinty, heard Mr. Wanamaker 
on the night of April 8th. There was a great crowd present. 
Following is what he said: 

"1 wish to submit to you ten facts. I will number them: 

"First. This State for nearly forty years has been under the 
control of the Camerons^ father and son, and their successors, 
M. S. Quay and W. H. Andrews. 

"Can that be denied? 

"Second. The expenses of the State and the taxes have 
steadily increased. 

"Can that be denied? 

"Third. The prices of property and the means of making 
a living have been decreased right along. 

"Can that be denied? 

"Fourth. The methods of legislation at Harrisburg have, 
year after year, gone from worse to worse, imtil the name 
Pennsylvania Legislature is a hissing and reproach all over the 
United States. 

THE LEXOW BILL RAID. 

"Fifth. Take the last Legislature as an illustration with its 
Lexow committee bill raid. Probably $5,000 of honest out- 
lay of clerk hire, etc., and a shameless bill put in for $65,000. 
Mileage grabs and junketing trips, investigating committees 
and commissions appointed to make places and draw salaries, 
by which many thousands of dollars were shoveled out of the 
treasury; voting duplicate salaries contrary to law; the padded 
pay-roll, putting men on pay-rolls without work as rewards 
for party services, whereby $27,000 is said to have been taken 
from the treasury without any authority of law. 



W. A. ^^TONE'S VIOLATED PLEDGES. 59 

"The State Treasurer taking an indemnity bond, signed by 
Frank Keeder, the premier of the Cabinet, who was obhged 
to resign, and by the present chairman of the Republican 
State committee, John P. Elkin, who was obliged to resign 
and who audaciously seeks to control the next election and 
continue to act as chairman of your State committee. These 
men I am not discussing as men, but as officers of the State 
who conspired with the State Treasurer in the use of tax- 
payers' money contrary to law. The bald, bare-faced cut of 
the school appropriation, jeopardizing evrry school and in- 
flicting injury on every county; punishment of 10,000 store- 
keepers by assessing a mercantile tax because many of them 
had formed Business Men's Leagues to elect McKinley and 
oppose Quay; the electric light scheme to benefit existing 
companies and kill off municipal ownership; the oleo bill, to 
make places for a horde of men and destroy dairy products. 

THE TJIRKIBLE TYRANNY OF BOSSISM. 

"Sixth. Tlie lerrible tyranny of bossism in the absolute 
control oi places and the dispensation of them, first by prom- 
ises to five or ten different parties for the same place prior to 
elections, and the final gift to the strongest party man, irre- 
spective of fitness to fill the place or the wish of the people re- 
garding the appointment. 

"Seventh. The widespread use of money in primary and 
other elections, the open purchase of the commercial, ignor-' 
ant and unemployed voters, the will of the people is over- 
thrown by whoever becomes chairman and members of the 
committee willing to take orders from the higher boss. 

"Eighth. The monstrous use of State money to further 
political campaigns. First, by depositing it v/ithout interest; 
second, by keeping it on deposit to the injury of the credit of 
the State; third, the entailing of suffering on the schools and 
school teachers, hospitals and charitable institutions. 

"Ninth. The political banks, formed for politicians and by 
politicians, and doing business with State money, often, as I 
am informed, loaned out to politicians, who in some cases 
have been connected with the banks and have shares in specu- 
lations, as I am informed. 



60 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

"Tenth. Interest or assessments collected from the numer- 
ous depositories which have been used to carry on political 
campaigns to prevent the people from having any other per- 
sons elected except the slated candidates. I could, if time 
permitted, double this list, but it is enough for one night." 

Mr. Wanamaker then referred at length to the recent $53,- 
000 printing job at Harrisburg, adding that the intention of 
the jobbers was to delay the completion of th^ work until after 
the election of a Quay Governor, and then, under the cover of 
the resolution to print the poultry pamphlets, to demand the 
payment of $53,200. Continuing, Mr. Wanamaker said: 

"This has been an exciting week in our country. Every 
morning we have wakened, expecting to find war declared. 
In Washington, at the House of Representatives and the Sen- 
ate, the scenes this week w^ere like those of 1861, when the 
civil war broke out, yet a Congressman, William A. Stone, 
elected by the people and drawing a salary from the United 
States Treasury, and while on the eve of war, has been follow- 
ing me over the State, neglecting his important duties at 
Washington to electioneer for the Governorship. By long 
distance phone our Senator telephones to a clerk in the 
Auditor General's office at Harrisburg, whose name I have, 
^Shut up your desk and drop your work and go to Lycoming 
and lick Wanamaker.' Mr. Stone, who in many ways I ad- 
mire, and with w^hom I am on pleasant terms, in his printed 
addresses is reported as saying: "^He does not know anything 
about the acts of the last Legislature. What do you think of 
that from a man who aspires to be Governor?' 

"Mr. Stone, without being at all specific, slyly intimates 
that he will not approve of some of the bad legislation defeated 
at the last session of the Legislature. The alarmed taxpayer 
who reads Mr. Stone's mild declaration that he will veto such 
legislation, if elected Governor, must get scant comfort there- 
from. But I will assume that Mr. Stone really intended to 
say more than he did, and that he believed he was making a 
promise full and unequivocal. As much as I dislike to chal- 
lenge the statement of any man, I am constrained as a tax- 
payer, not as a candidate, to inquire if, in his public and offi- 



TT^ A. STONE'S VIOLATED PLEDGES. Qi 

cial career, Mr. Stone has kept faith with the people and 
always made good his ante-election pledges? Mr. Stone went 
before the people, in 1896, as a candidate for national dele- 
gate to the St. Lonis Convention from the Twenty-third Con- 
gressional district of Allegheny county. 

STONE DID NOT VOTE FOR McKINLEY. 

"The Republican voters of Allegheny were almost a unit 
for McKinley, and the known relations existing between Mr. 
Stone and Senator Qua}^, who was also a candidate for the 
Presidency, were such as to arouse a storm of opposition to 
Mr. Stone. To save himself from defeat Mr. Stone, together 
with his Quay colleague, signed and forwarded to the Republi- 
can county chairman of Allegheny county, and caused the 
same to be published in the Allegheny county papers, the fol- 
lowing pledge, bearing date of March 25, 1896: 

" ^We pledge that we will honorably and fully represent 
and vote in acordance with the will and preference, for Presi- 
dent, of a plurality of the Republican voters of the Congres- 
sioanl district within which we are candidates for delegates, 
whenever expressed by a plarity of those voting a preference 
at a primary election held previous to the meeting of the 
National Convention, in which we are delegates, after due 
notice has been given by the chairman of the county com- 
mittee that they will have an opportunity in said primaries 
to express such preference.' 

(Signed) ROBERT McAFEE. 

W. A. STONE.' 

"The publication of Mr. Stone's pledge ^to vote in accord- 
ance with the will and preference of a plurality of the Re- 
publicans in his Congressional district, as expressed at the 
primaries,' relieved him of all opposition and he was chosen a 
national delegate and instructed by an overwhelming major- 
ity of the votes cast to support William McKinley. But in 
the face of his pledge and the binding instructions he had 
received for McKinley he voted for Senator Quay; and I am 
informed by a close friend of Mr. Stone that his moral obli- 
gation did not trouble him in the least, but so anxious was he 



62 SI'EfX'HLt^ OF BON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

to know wlijit olTcct it would have upon his political future, 
if he disobeyed instructions, that he went about asking the 
judgment of other delegates. 

STONE CANNOT BE TRUSTED. 

"If W. A. Stone made a solemn pledge in '96 upon a most 
vital question and defiantly broke it to please his master, on a 
question purely of sentiment, as his vote could do Mr. Quay 
no real good, dare you as taxpayers place faith in his promises 
to protect your interests, and dare you make him the custodian 
of your affairs and the guardian of your moneys? Can you 
believe that he will be less false to his promises now than to 
his pledge in '96? Then it was a question of compliment to 
his master; now it is a question of hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to the ring. 

"It is because of this condition of things in our State that 
I am here to say to you that you do well to think before you 
continue the old regime. I do not ask you to take me. I do 
not want you to save anything for me. Save yourselves! 
Save your taxes, your honor, jour work, or Quay and the cor- 
porations who keep him in office will own the State. 

"Electing W. A. Stone is to elect Quay and Andrews for 
four years." 



AN INFAMOUS RECORD. 



Some of the Measures which the Quay-owned 
Senators tried to force through the last Legisla- 
ture — W^hy Senator Quay is held responsible 
for its bad deeds and rotten record. 
The great work done by the 
Anti-Machine Legislators. 
Pennsylvania bound 
hand and foot. 



The most scathing arraignment of any legislature in the 
history of Pennsylvania was made by ex-Postmaster General 
Wanamaker before an immense audience at Pottstown on the 
evening of April 9th. Mr. Wanamaker said: 



AN INFAMOUS KECQRD. 63 

"The issue in Pennsylvania politics to be discussed to-night 
is an entirely different one from any that has been presented 
in this State in my lifetime. 

"However much others may want office, I know one man 
who does not. I came to you in 1896 and spoke upon tariff 
and finance and McKinley, and thongh I knew the Senatorial 
election was .approaching and that I was considered for the 
office, I never opened my lips to you on the subject, because 
the questions I discussed were so much larger than anything 
personal to myself. The political situation is everything; 
men are secondary. The issue is to unloose the iron shackles 
of a machine that purchases elections with money and offices, 
and controls the Legislature and the public money of the 
State in the interests of bankers, politicians and State com- 
mittees and hired workers, thus perpetuating the wretched 
system" of boss rule. 

"But three newspapers in this county are said to be willing 
to publish anything against the machine; hence you are driven 
to purchase other newspapers if you want the news 'on both 
sides of the public questions of this State. Those of your 
own neighbors who desire meetings at various points in the 
county cannot fully notify the people because the notices and 
placards of the meetings are stolen or torn down by unfriendly 
hands. But such dastardly conduct, like a bad gun, kicks 
backward, and the people, to show their resentment of guer- 
rilla warfare, turn out everywhere in larger numbers, as you 
have done to-night. 

OFFICE HOLDERS ARE SATISFIEJ). 

"I received a letter to-day from a gentleman in one of the 
counties, who said that he did not see any need for any move- 
ment against the machine. It was good enough for him. It 
certainly is good enough for office holders, who hold a nation- 
al and State patent for seventeen years on their places and for 
all who share in the royal bounty of the First Lord of the 
State Treasury and Controller of the Corporations. 

"Whoever stands by the existing ring writes ^approved' over 
the conduct of the last Legislature, owned and directed by the 
boss. He indorses all that was done to raid the Treasury, re- 



64 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

move money unlawfully from the State custody, and pay it 
out to those who never earned a nickel of it. But there are 
others to whom it is unalterably clear that servility to bosses 
is not good Republicanism, and whose minds are open for in- 
formation, and perhaps to conviction that there are better 
methods of State government than what are in vogue in this 
Commonwealth. There are those who see in sight the final 
breaking up of an iniquitous system and who want to be on 
the winning side; young men who have got to stay out of poli- 
tics entirely if the condition is the surrender of manhood by 
abject slavery to the bosses. They are plucking up courage 
to fight for standing ground within the party by driving off 
from it the slate-makers and the Treasury takers. 

"Let us for a few minutes take soundings and see where we 
are: The Pennsylvania State Senate is composed of 50 mem- 
bers. Of this number 44 of the last Senate were Republicans, 
and at least 35 of the 44 were men controlled absolutely by 
W. H. Andrews and Senator Quay. All the important com- 
mittees were made up of men whose chief desire had been 
proven to be servants of Andrews and Quay. In the Senate 
Committees originated nearly all of the vicious legislation 
attempted, or passed, by the last Legislature, and in the same 
committees were destroyed and killed all meritorious •bills 
with a few exceptions, when the public sentiment was strong 
enough to practically force them out of the committee's con- 
trol. Senator Quay's friends, if they ever try to deny any im- 
peachment of his conduct, will never, I am sure, try to deny 
that the Senate of Pennsylvania was his abject tool, and I 
am positive that he will not try to deny that he absolutely 
controlled the origin and the fountain of legislation, and that 
all measures were created and given life by his grace, or met 
death as he might dictate. No bad bill considered by the last 
Legislature could have lived beyond the committee room if 
it had not had Senator Quay's approval. 

"In the House were nearly 70 Anti-Quay men, and although 
every committee had a large Quay m.ajority, there were neces- 
sarily enough members of the 'Seventy-six' on each com- 
mittee to imperil the success of bad bills. It was therefore 



AN INFAMOUS KEGOIW. (55 

very plain why Senator Quay under the personal direction of 
W. H. Andrews, made the State Senate an incubator to 
hatch the legislation that has alarmed the taxpayers and 
made the name of the last Legislature a reproach. 

SCHEMES TO LOOT THE TREASURY. 

"Let us consider some of the things this Quay organization 
did: 

"All investigating committees and junketing bogus expense 
bills, amounting to nearly $160,000, were introduced by Quay 
Senators, reported favorably by Quay's committees and passed 
by the Quay Senate. 

"The notorious Lexow bill, that asked $65,000 for a fake 
investigating committee, that is said to have charged $1 per 
stalk for asparagus; that charged an average of $23 per day 
each for the hotel bills of its members; that, with an average 
attendance of four members it charged $482.72 for each hour 
it was in session, was introduced by a Quay Senator, reported 
favorably by a Quay committee and passed by a Quay Senate. 

"The Brewery License bill, to allow any man, regardless of 
personal character, to obtain a license upon the payment of 
$1000 to the State Treasurer, and permitting breweries to be 
located next to schools and churches, was introduced by a 
Quay Senator, reported favorably by a Quay committee, and 
passed passed by a Quay Senate. The objects of the bill, it is 
said, were two fold; first, to allow a brewery in which W. H. 
Andrews is a stockholder to obtain a license; second, to break 
down the barriers of the Brooks license law, which says a 
man to obtain a license must be of good character, and which 
prohibits the locating of breweries next to schools and 
churches. 

"TheW. H.Andrews Bank bill, that would have taken away 
all the protection to depositors by allowing stockholders after 
looting banks, to transfer their liabilities and obligations to 
persons financially irresponsible, was introduced by a Quay 
Senator, reported favorably by a Quay committee and passed 
by a Quay Senate. 

"The Saylor bill, to permit the State Treasurer to pay the 
expenses of investigating committees, before allowing the 



^e SPEtJGBES OP tiO^. JotlN WaNAMAK^JU. 

Legislature or the Governor to pass upon them, which would 
have lost to the State last session more than $50,000, was in- 
troduced by a Quay Senator, reported favorably by a Quay 
committee and passed by a Quay Senate. 

"After the Bliss Beer bills had passed the House, it was a 
Quay Senate Committee that struck out all except the enact- 
ing clause, and changed it to the Mercantile bill, that would 
have crippled or driven out of business many important 
Pennsylvania industries. An interesting incident that may 
have had a very important bearing upon this bill has never 
yet found its way into the newspapers. 

TWO CAR LOADS OF BREWKRS. 

"On the Saturday and Sunday preceding the change made 
in the bill in the Senate two carloads of brewers from Western 
Pennsylvania held a consultation, I am told, with W. H. 
Andrews and other members of the Legislature at the Hotel 
AValton, in Philadelphia. The fact of their visit was sup- 
pressed by the newspapers, their special cars were carefully 
guarded and strict orders given to the car porters that no one 
should know who the occupants of the cars were, or what 
was the nature of their business. Within forty-eight hours 
after their departure the Beer bill was changed to the Mer- 
cantile Tax bill. 

"The obnoxious Pool bill, licensing pool selling and gam- 
bling by race tracks, driving clubs, etc., throughout the State, 
was introduced by a Quay Senator, reported favorably by a 
Quay committee, and passed by a Quay Senate. It was a 
Quay committee that refused to bring the bill requiring inter- 
est on State deposits out of committee until Senator Kauff- 
man had prepared a resolution to discharge said committee 
from further consideration of the measure, and when they 
did report it from committee, it contained a provision to give 
the Machine permanently the use of $1,500,000 without in- 
terest. 

"It was a Quay Committee that cut the public school appro- 
priation $1,000,000, which would have taken from the schools 
of Montgomery County $21,015 every two years. 



AN INFAMOUS RECORD. ^7 

"I might go on and enumerate bills of like character for 
hours, but will not weary you with them to-night. 

"There are those who claim that these statements should not 
be made. No man can deny their truthfulness, but there are 
those who call in question the loyalty of any man to his party 
when he questions or opposes existing practices. I, for one, 
believe that public good comes before party subserviency. 
I once beat a man until his body was sore and bruised black 
and blue; I beat him with the desperation of a man fighting 
for life, but it was not my life, it was his. 

^Tle had taken morphine, and when I discovered him at 
midnight he was drifting down to death. It was good for 
him to be beaten back to life, and the years he lived afterward 
he was ever grateful to me. The Eepublican party cannot 
carry forever its load of evils inseparable from a one-man boss 
power in each State. 

THE PEOPLE ARE LONG SUFFERING. 

"The people are long suffering, much occupied and easily 
fooled, but there is a limit to all things, and we are to-day 
in Pennsylvania walking close to the edge of Republican ruin. 
To a man 59 years of age who has a mercantile office most 
agreeable to him it is of small consequence how an election 
turns, but to the people who are borne down with taxes and 
schemes to pilfer the Treasury by contracts of Capitol build- 
ings from the hiring of an architect up to the lightning rod, 
by broken promises of reform, by defeats of useful legislation, 
by obstructing for years and finally defeating lawful appor- 
tionment, by the hiding of actual facts of broken banks to 
shield unlawful practices, by concealment of the places of 
deposit of large sums of the sinking fund public money; by 
these and much more of evil work are the people of the State 
made sufferers as well as losers of prosperity. 

"John Brown was executed for treason against the State 
of Virginia. Pennsylvania hugs to its bosom and crowns with 
highest place the men who defile legislative halls with dis- 
honest acts and defy public sentiment by rewards to unworthy 
party workers. A financial institution discharges a man who 



68 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

takes its moneys, and the State of Pennsylvania stands dumb 
and apparently willing to let a favored few put their hands 
into the pockets of the treasury year after year, and as deep 
as they like. 

**My fellow-citizens, Pennsylvania is in prison — ^her six mil- 
lions of sturdy sons and daughters are locked in with five 
thousand keys carried on a ring held in the tight grip of Sena- 
tor Quay. The doors that bar the way of the people are ar- 
mor-plated and pipe-braced and double-railed by the corpora- 
tions who for needed protection for past legislation and to 
save from threatened removal thereof pile up money bags 
over which the people fear to attempt to climb. You fought 
for liberty at Valley Forge, and you surrender it without a 
struggle in the same county within sound of the spot once 
foot-marked with the blood of the soldiers of the Eevolution. 
You fought for liberty for the Union. Why not fight for 
liberty for Pennsylvania? You voted down black slavery, 
why not vote down slavery to one white man, even though 
for a quarter of a century he has been your master? There 
are people who do not care what comes; but are they the true 
friends of the Republic? I believe the storm is coming, that 
it is near and that it is time to prepare for the change close 
at hand. The old Republican ship was built to carry an honest 
cargo to be shared by all the people, and it was not intended 
to be captured by pirates and scuttled rather than give it up 
to its owners. Let us throw overboard the dangerous freight 
and save the passengers. 



HOW THE PEOPLE ARE ROBBED. 69 

HOW THE PEOPLE ARE ROBBED. 



The General Appropriation Bill is made the Jobbers' 

Ammunition Bill — A graphic description of how 

the Quay-Machine Leaders manipulate the 

States Money for their own ends — Cash 

that is spent in defiance of Law. 

The Frauds and Fakes in the 

General Appropriation Bill. 

Newspapers that dare not 

publish facts. 



The flagrant manner in which the Quay bosses violate 
the constitution at every session of the Legislature was de- 
scribed by Mr. Wanamaker in his speech at Bryn Mawr on 
the night of April 13th, as follows: 

"Across the county line in old Lancaster County a most 
reputable citizen was murdered a week ago because he sought 
to regain possession of his own property by rightful process 
of law. The man in possession leveled upon him a shot gun 
and blew his landlord's brains out without a moment's warn- 
ing. For some time after the murder the occupant of the 
house defied the law and held possession, but was finally 
captured. 

"The position of Pennsylvanians towards the officers who 
administer the government of the State is analogous. The 
system began forty years ago to unify the control of elections 
in the machine and the perfection of the machine into one 
pair of iron hands has been so gradual that the people have 
been slow to realize the abyss into which they have fallen. 

"It is like unto an open road on private property, open and 
in use a time too long to ever close it again — the careless 
occupancy granted the public constitutes it a public road, 
and it can never be recovered again to its actual owners. 

"The long occupancy of offices by men who perhaps never 
had any other employment seems to have conferred upon 
them a title royal. The people to-day — think of it — are 
standing outside of their own doors and afraid to move into 
what they own, while the gang hold possession. 



70 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"The fact that the term of occupancy will soon expire for 
a number of the four-year tenants, and that town meetings 
are held to prepare for housecleaning and refurnishing has 
the extraordinary effect of making angry and irritable the 
well-treated tenants who claim rights to remain and others 
who believe it proper to select without reference to the 
owners those who shall succeed the present tenants. 

"The indignation of the long-established rulers or bosses 
of the people's stations is such that they have made a com- 
bine of all the tenants who have taken orders and, in fact, 
have already put their places in a condition of siege or 
defense, making common cause to keep the people out of their 
lawful rights. This is an insurrection not so far off as 
Cuba, but its result is just as certain. 

"I am not here to produce an effect on those who do not 
think, but to reach men who are willing to think and ready 
afterward to follow their own thinking. 

"Ordinarily the grave questions incident to ring rule might 
be left alone to work out their own salvation, but year by 
year for forty years the system has forced itself upon the 
people until it has grasped the body politic like a deadly 
octopus, dragging down the honor of the State and the 
welfare of its people. 

RING RULE'S YOKE. 

"Ordinarily this condition of things might be suffered to 
right itself through the teachings of the press, pulpit and 
public teachers. As to the newspapers, they are business 
enterprises pure and simple, influenced by personal, social, 
political and business considerations. To the muzzled office- 
holders and the eagerly expectant officeholder, worth double 
of the actual officeholder, is added a muzzled press that 
selects what pleases the boss and publishes only political 
news as directed or sent out by the campaign or State com- 
mittees. 

"Thus are the people kept in ignorance, not only of both 
sides of public questions, but actually of the truth and the 
news of passing events. 



i/OlV 77//? PEOPLP] A II I] llOlilibb. 7J^ 

"I heard last Saturday the statement by an influential Mont- 
gomery County man that in this county, containing more 
than forty newspapers, there were but three that would pub- 
lish anything fairly opposing the squatter sovereignty of the 
entrenched officeholders and their commanding officers. 

WANAMAKER'S ADVERTISING AND POLITICS. 

"It cannot be said that this state of things arises from the 
fact that the newspapers are inimical to me because they 
do not carry the advertisements of my business firm, because 
I believe that most of them have the advertising. I am not 
in the columns of some of the papers, but I will be glad 
to prove to any one that has any desire to know the truth 
that saving one case, based upon a slander on a junior mem- 
ber of our firm, there is a business reason and none other for 
not advertising in any paper. 

"As to the pulpit and public teachers, it is a mournful fact 
that we have become accustomed to talk earnestly and long 
— and I must add in all fairness — honestly, too, upon the 
evils of elections and legislation and high-handed outrages 
of political leaders; but when it comes to doing anything 
practical to change things, we are too busy; have other en- 
gagements, or find some other excuse. Politicians active at 
their business understand this and laugh in their sleeves at 
us, and can go to sleep unconcerned, knowing from long 
experience that our political campaigns are protests, inter- 
views, hopes, much faith in what ought to be and in passing 
resolutions. Others of our busy public citizens are like the 
witty Irish soldier, who boasted greatly of his determination 
and fighting qualities; who was known to invariably play the 
coward when in an engagement. When his captain referred 
to his conduct he said: 'Well, captain, sure, and me heart 
is as big and strong as Napoleon's, but it's me bad legs that 
always runs away with me.' 

'In the absence of newspapers not free to print anything 
but colored political news and views those who are under 
vows to strive for better government in the State are driven 
to the old New England custom of town meetings, where 



72 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

as Plato puts, ^one soul comes in contact with another and 
nothing hetween.' 

"I am not here to attack any man in public life, as an indi- 
vidual, but to deal fairly with the record. 

"I wish I might be separated personally from the discussion, 
so far as an office is concerned, and that the greater questions 
of the public interest might be considered. 

"Hardly any man is always understood. Lincoln in his 
lifetime wasn't, neither was Blaine nor Garfield nor Harri- 
son, and as for Wanamaker, the mistake about one post- 
office appointment, if it was a mistake, when all sides are 
understood, must curse him for ten years not only as Post- 
mai5ter General, b'ut for everything else, and forever. Is it 
not possible to pu^ Wanamaker entirely out of the case, while 
we resolve together for the undoing of the captivity of Penn- 
sylvania? I will shorten my talk to-nig^ht, perhaps already 
too long, to a single visit to Harrisburg, where we will look 
at the members of the Legislature as they appeared last 
Winter, unmasked of their pre-election dresses and clad in 
their every-day working clothes. 

SOME OF THE 'MOST NOTORIOUS BILLS. 

"Nearly eighteen hundred bills were considered at the last 
session of the Legislature, and of one I will speak in par- 
ticular to-night. It is called the general appropriation bill, 
and it is a most important measure to the people, as it carries 
the appropriations to run the State Government, and assist 
the public schools. Because of these vitally essential items 
that it contains it has become the instrument by which 
Senator Quay's political henchmen, unlawfully and with 
great boldness, take large sums of money from the State 
Treasury to reward their faithful followers. So notorious 
have become the abuses practiced by politicians under the 
cover of this bill that it may truly be called "^Quay's Ammu- 
nition Bill,' for if there is anything forgotten in the pre- 
paration of other questionable measures, if the time is too 
short to pass political appropriations in the regular way, 
or if there is danger in exposing them to the light of day, 



HOW THE PEOPLE ARE ROBBED. 73 

if padded pay-rolls must be padded more, if the number of 
political pensioners must be increased, if illegal salaries are 
demanded by Quay's officials or by their friends, the general 
appropriation bill under ingenious manipulation can be made 
to supply every want. 

"The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Article III, Section 15, 
provides that the general appropriation bill shall contain 
nothing but appropriations for the ordinary expenses of the 
Executive, Legislative and judicial departments of the Com- 
monwealth interest on public debt and for common schools, 
and that all other appropriations must be separate bills. 
Nothing can be clearer or more explicit than the law on 
this question. But let us see how little even the Constitu- 
tion serves to protect the Treasury against these political 
raiders. Let us keep clearly in mind that nothing shall be 
contained in the general appropriation bill except for de- 
partment expenses, public schools and interest on the public 
debt; all other appropriations must be by separate bills. 

HOW THE CONSTITUTION IS VIOLATED. 

"I will mention a few of the many items that belong to 
neither of these classes, but which appear in the last general 
appropriation bill. I find an item to reimburse a man whom 
'tis claimed erroneously paid taxes. Another item was for 
portraits of State and ex-State officials. Another item was 
for $2150 to pay clerk hire for an investigating committee, 
in excess of the appropriation allowed by law. Another item 
was for $5000 for expenses of a committee on utilizing con- 
vict labor, another item was for $3234.81 to pay for the fake 
investigation of the State Treasurer's and Auditor General's 
departments. This item was inserted in the general appro- 
priation bill after its passage by a separate bill became im- 
possible. 

"A member of the House, originally one of the ^Seventy- 
six,' admitted that he had agreed to support the Quay bills 
on a promise from a Quay Senator to have inserted in the 
general appropriation bill an item for clerk hire for one of his 
constituents. The item appeared in the bill as promised, but 
was vetoed b^ the Goverjior. 



74 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Another item of $1000 was to pay the expenses of dele- 
gates to the coast defence congress, notwithstanding they 
were notified in advance that no compensation would be 
given. Another item was to pay Charles Ettla, one of the 
faithful, and George Baker, the alleged private secretary of 
State Senator Israel W. Durham, $450.80 each, as secretary 
and doorkeeper of the Penitentiary Committee. The com- 
mittee expense bill, introduced separately, evidently had all 
it could carry for these two persons with safety, as each 
received by that bill $802. But perhaps the most remarkable 
item of all was one of $1027 to pay the funeral expenses of 
two ex-members of the Legislature, one of whom served 
nearly twelve years ago, but who had rendered marked po- 
litical service to Senator Quay in the last TJ. S. Senatorial 
contest. 

"I need not mention other items of this character, as they 
really constitut?* but a very small part of real abuses prac- 
ticed under this bill. It no doubt seems strano^e to vou all 
how such a bill can ever pass, with all the glaring frauds 
known to every member of the Legislature. That was the 
first question I asked, and so astounding were the reasons 
given me that I want to tell them to you to-night. Two 
general appropriation bills are reported from Senate and 
House Committees respectively, and passed on first reading 
in skeleton form, and are then sent back to the committees. 
During the last week of the session both bills are again re- 
ported from committees, with very few objectionable items 
in them, and are passed on second reading, and again sent 
back to the committees. 

"They appear again for third reading upon the last day 
of the session containing many doubtful items; an effort is 
made by the minority to strike out those items, but under 
the promises of the machine leaders to eliminate these con- 
tested items in the Conference Committee, where it is always 
sent to adjust the apparent difference in the two bills, the 
bill passes third reading. The report of the Conference Com- 
mittee is held back and not placed upon the members' desks 
for final passage until the last hour of the session. Then the 
pressure is applied. A change in any particular necessitates 



MOW THE PEOPLE ARE ROBBED. 7.' 

the reprinting of the bill. It will require several hours for 
reprinting and there is but one hour left. The members 
cannot draw their salaries unless the bill passes within one 
hour. The departments must cease business. The public 
schools will not get their appropriations, nor the hospitals 
their money for maintenance if the bill fails. Such are the 
arguments used on the members by the State officials and 
political lieutenants who swarm the House to lobby for the 
bill. The machine following always goes along. New mem- 
bers are frightened into supporting jt. Old members who 
might make trouble have probably been taken care of in 
some of the items, and the bill passes. No ordinary man 
has the courage to hold out against such pressure, though 
every member who votes for it knows full well that by so 
doing he assists to rob the treasury. 

THE CONSTITUTION DEFIED BY THE JOBBERS. 

"At the last session of the Legislature the 'Seventy-six,' led 
by Kepresentative Coray, of Luzerne County, tried to defeat 
the padded pay-roll items. He presented the list of officers 
and employees of the Senate and House, together with their 
legal salaries, and showed where two items were padded more 
than $25,000. He challenged the Quay leaders and the 
chairman of the Appropriation Committee to make answer 
to his charges, and they admitted by their silence that the 
charges were true. Every member of the House knew he 
was voting for a bogus pay-roll, but the items were retained 
by the Quay element after a bitter fight. The Constitution, 
Article III, Section 13, says that no law shall increase or 
diminish the salary or emoluments of any public officer after 
his election or appointment. When the bill was on second 
reading, four items, providing for two extra and unlawful 
salaries each for the State Treasurer and Auditor General, 
aggregating $4800, were stricken out after the chairman of 
the Appropriation Committee had admitted that they had 
been inserted without any authority of law. In Conference 
Committee, the last night, these four items, that three days 
prior had been overwhelmingly defeated in the House, were 
reinserted in the bill, and, in defiance of the Constitution, 



76 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

were passed. This salary giving was not confined alone to 
the Auditor General and State Treasurer in the last bill, but 
another item was inserted giving to a superintendent of the 
Bureau of Eailways $4,000 not authorized by any act of As- 
sembly. 

"The last general appropriation bill caried with it items 
aggregating $68,500 for the contingent expenses of the 
various departments. The expenditure of these contingent 
sums has always been surrounded by scandal. It is impos- 
sible to tell how much of it is honestly needed, as no itemized 
bills of estimates are ever presented to the Legislature, but 
the Quay chief of a department tells a Quay chairman of a 
Quay Appropriation Committtee how much money he wants 
in a lump sum, and a Quay Legislature passes it. I have not 
the time to-night to detail other frauds committed in the 
general appropriation bill. With a machine-made and a 
machine-owned Governor, this bill may be made to give every 
official on the Hill a double salary, and to carry hundreds 
of thousands of dollars of illegal items, and do it under the 
guise of the law. The Lexow bill, the padded payrolls and 
the indemnity bond will never again be introduced under 
their true titles, but, with the aid of an Andrews-elected 
Governor every one can surely be passed in the general ap- 
propriation bill." 



STONE'S STATEMENTS PROVEN 

FALSE. 



Documents produced by his own County Chairman 
showing his statements to have been false. 
The attempt to punish the Business 
Men's League by passing the notorious 
Mercantile Tax Bill. Why 
State Treasury Specu- 
lators are not 
punished. 



Mr. Wanamaker prefaced his address at Ambler and Ash- 
bourne on the evening of April 14th by referring to the 



^TONE'S STATEMENTS PROVEN FALSE. 77 

impending trouble between this country and Spain, and 
said that he had notified the Secretary of War that in caae 
war was declared he would raise a regiment of 1,000 Penn- 
sylvanians and go with, them in service. Mr. Wanamaker 
also stated that he had given orders to any who enter the 
army that their positions are to be retained for them and 
also that their pay is to continue while in service. Con- 
tinuing Mr. Wanamaker said: 

"A number of letters reach me from all over the State upon 
this campaign. Less than one per cent, of them claim that 
there is nothing wrong with the political niachine, or in the 
methods of the State Legislature and the management of the 
Treasury. These contented folks swallow the engineering 
feats of the leaders, the rewards to the heelers, the bills of 
the junketing trips, padded pay-rolls and manipulations of 
the State Treasury without uneasiness. Mr. Lincoln once 
said: 'Well, what people like, that's what people will have/ 
Is it not strange that we should stop to ask the question, why 
people who pay taxes care to tax themselves, instead of tax- 
ing the bankers, who have the use of State moneys for 
nothing; why they are willing to bear increased taxes to 
pay double, and, in other cases, unearned salaries; why they 
are willing to shut their eyes or wink at the enormous and 
unnecessary outlays of taxpayers' money for commission* 
and investigating committees. 

"It would seem that Pennsylvanians cared very little how 
much, taxes they paid, or how little they got for their money; 
that the object of paying tax bills to the State was to pro- 
vide a large campaign fund to keep Senators and Legislators 
in office, that they might slate Governors and all the other 
officers down to a city School Director. We tax ourselves 
to let Senator Quay pick out our Congressmen and Post- 
masters and to pay all his own and his friends' election ex- 
penses. Interesting and true, is it not? A slice out of all 
contracts and a handful out of the bag, or the bills shall not 
pass, is the inflexible and almost unvaried rule of Harris- 
burg Legislative practice. 

"You were not aware of this? I am not surprised. How 
could you know, with the newspaper press barring out of 



78 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

almost every paper all that told the truth as to the evil 
methods in vogue in the Legislature. With such privileges, 
is it strange that there is such a desperate fight to hold office? 
Must it not be a very valuable place when two opposing 
candidates spend together $350,000 contesting for the 
place of the chairman of the State committee, because of its 
unlimited control of delegates and State conventions and 
nominations? 

OF INTEREST TO EVERY STORE KEEPER. 

"Is it any wonder that great and even criminal chances 
must be taken by the leaders in proposing and pushing leg- 
islation that will pay off promissory notes for loans lodged 
in banks carrying State deposits, and reimburse empty treas- 
uries of State and other election committees? The audacity 
of these sovereigns of boss-ridden Pennsylvania is well illus- 
trated by the outrageous attempt to pass the mercantile tax 
bill. That bill was intended to do three things. First, 
punish the business men who had organized business men^s 
leagues to further honest elections. Second, to make a great 
many new offices. Third, to replenish the coffers of a great 
many people interested in elections. 

"It was in every sense a pinch bill. By its provisions power 
was given to appoint seventy-six Appraisers at large salaries 
and pay necessary expenses for clerks, traveling, hotels, inci- 
dentals. Attorney General McCormick said that bill would 
permit an outlay of a million of dollars in collecting the tax. 

"One of the many candidates for Governor has taken a 
notion to follow me and criticise my speeches. The one thing 
the people want answered — the charges of wrong-doing in 
public offices at Harrisburg — he declares he knows nothing 
about. 

"Colonel Stone recently took me to task for a remark which 
I made in one of my speeches relative to his absence from 
his post of duty at Washington, by asking if I did not know 
that at that time the House was not in session. I stand cor- 
rected upon that for that particular moment of time, but 
I would like to ask the gentleman what excuse he has to 
offer for absenting himseK from the halls of Congress on 



STONB'S STATEMENTS PROVEN FALSE. 79 

the day of all days that he should have felt it his duty, and 
the duty he owed to his constituents? I refer to yesterday, 
when the vote on the resolution on the President's message 
was being taken, a matter that deeply affects every man, 
woman and child who claims to be a true American. 

"In a speech at Conshohocken, in your county, last Satur- 
day night W. A. Stone, in an endeavor to explain my state- 
ment that 1 had been informed that he had violated his writen 
pledge to the people of his home district when a delegate to 
the National Convention, among other things he said: 

" ^Now let me give you the facts. The convention which 
nominated Mr. McAfee and myself as delegates to the St. 
Louis convention was composed of 150 delegates. After 
nominating us it unanimously instructed us to vote for 
Senator Quay. That convention had the full right to in- 
struct us, and it did so. After the convention the county 
committee, which is controlled by Pittsburg politicians, 
adopted a new rule requiring me to sign a paper agreeing 
to vote in the convention as the Eepublican electors of the 
county voted at the primaries held for county offices. Then 
a contest began between William McKinley's adherents and 
Senator Quay's adherents as to which should receive the 
popular vote of that Congressional district.' 

W. A. STONE'S STATEMENTS DISPROVED. 

"Entirely unsolicited the following facts have come to 
me: When A. C. Eobertson, chairman of the Eepublican 
county executive committee, was shown the above extract 
from Mr. Stone's speech, he said: *That statement is un- 
true. Had any other candidate for Governor made a state- 
ment so clearly at variance with the truth I would have been 
inclined to think that it was a slip of memory, but, coming 
as it does from such a prolific letter writer as William A. 
Stone, and a man who has violated two written pledges to 
his constituents, I am rather inclined to believe that he 
knew exactly what he was saying and made the statement 
several hundred miles from home, in the hope that no one 
would contradict it. Mr. Stone should have looked over his 
letter copy-book before he made such a statement, for I have 



80 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

his pledge here in writing, signed by himself, and there can 
be no mistake as to what he said. Here is the letter.' With 
this Mr. Robertson produced the following letter: 

" Tittsburgh, Pa., March 27, 1896. 
" 'To the Chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Ex- 
ecutive Committee: 

" *I hereby file with you, in accordance with the rules gov- 
erning the Republican party of Allegheny county, my written 
pledge that I will honorably and fully represent and vote 
in accordance with the will and preference for President of 
a plurality of the Republican voters of the Congressional 
district within Which I am a candidate for delegate, when- 
ever expressed by a plurality of those voting a preference at 
a primary election held previous to the meeting of the na- 
tional convention, in which I am a delegate, after due notice 
has been given by the chairman of the county committee 
that they will have an opportunity in said primaries to ex- 
press such preference, in case I am elected a delegate. 

" 'I also enclose herewith my contribution of $25, for adver- 
tising and other incidental expenses, as provided by said 
rules. 

WM. A. STONE.' 

"Continuing, Chairman Robertson said: 'As you can readily 
see, Mr. Stone wrote that pledge on March 27, 1896, just the 
day before the Republican primaries were held to elect dele- 
gates to the convention which met on the following Tues- 
day and which elected Mr. Stone a delegate to the national 
convention, so that his statement that this rule was adopted 
after he was elected a delegate is a falsehood. Now, the rule 
compelling candidates to pledge themselves to vote in the 
convention as the Republicans of their district desired was 
adopted a week previous to the national delegate primaries. 
It is rule 16 of the Republican county executive committee, 
and was adopted by a vote of 231 to 64. Mr. Stone tried to 
have the rule defeated at the committee meeting, but failed. 

" 'Shortly before a vote was taken on Presidential prefer- 
ence in Mr. Stone's district he sent out a number of letters 



STONE'S STATEMENTS PKOVEN FALSE. 81 

asking the people to vote instructions for Quay, but the 
people were for McKinley and said so at the polls. Besides 
the letter I have shown you Mr. Stone signed a pledge in 
conjunction with Kohert A. McAfee. Stone went to the 
national convention and voted for Quay notwithstanding the 
fact that a plurality of the Kepublican voters in his district 
had instructed him to vote for McKinley. 

" ^I see that in this same speech he says he will veto any 
Lexow appropriation bills. That statement is really laugh- 
able. 'Bill' Andrews is his campaign manager, and An- 
drews was the head of the Lexow committee. Mr. Stone's 
written pledge didn't seem to amount to much and I guess 
his verbal one will be taken with a grain of allowance. 
Abraham Lincoln once said: *You can fool some of the 
people all the time and all of the people some of the time, 
but you cannot fool all the people all the time.' I would sug- 
gest to Mr. Stone that he commit that adage to memory. I 
have nothing personally against Colonel Stone, but as a Re- 
publican I do not believe that he would be an available can- 
didate. The party ought not to be called upon to defend its 
candidate for the chief office in the Commonwealth against 
such flagrant violations of pledges made to the people. The 
party suffered defeat eight years ago, when 'Bill' Andrews 
succeeded in nominating Delamater by the same methods that 
he is using now to further Colonel Stone's candidacy.' 

"It comes with poor grace for Quay men to talk of party 
loyalty. Why did they refuse to support that gallant Re- 
publican Samuel H. Ashbridge for Sheriff at the last 
Shrievalty election and by dealing with the Democrats rob 
McKinley of 30,000 votes in an hour of our country's peril? 
They did not then think it wrong to bolt the regular ticket. 
Why did they turn down an old, able and distinguished and 
one-legged soldier, Major Hancock, an applicant for the 
Collectorship of the Port, and appoint a man whose only 
claim was that he was a party worker of Senator Quay's? 

CHARGES THAT REMAIN UNANSWERED. 

"This is the twelfth speech I have delivered since tlie be- 
ginning of this campaign for the liberation of Pennsylvania, 



82 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

and in every single one of them I have made charges so 
serious, based, however, upon official figures and incontro- 
vertible records, against the existing political system, that I 
fail to see how any honest or self-respecting voter who has 
read them carefully can again support a Quay ticket until 
those charges are answered or proven false. I am asked why, 
if these abuses -exist and this law-breaking is so widespread 
and far-reaching, does not some one begin a criminal prose- 
cution. 

"I have shown that since Senator Quay has possessed con- 
trol of the funds of the State Treasury that the loss to 
the taxpayers from this source alone has been two and one- 
half million of dollars. I have also shown that the millions 
of the State's money that is withheld from the people and 
used for the benefit of Senator Quay's political machine and 
Senator Quay's political friends is the heart of political 
corruption in Penns3dvania. Why, j^ou ask, if State 
officials receive pay for the use of State deposits, which 
they convert to their own personal use, are they not 
prosecuted? Tw^o very good reasons can be given. 
First, law^s have been enacted and so amended for the past 
fifteen years that those with the backing of the machine dare 
openly violate the law without fear of harm. There seems 
to have been a consistent effort to surround those who deal 
dishonestly with State funds with protective laws. 

"Second. With the machine control as it is to-day I doubt 
if any attempt to convict in our Federal courts a self-con- 
fessed treasury raider would be successful. This belief is 
based upon past history, since it is known far and wide that 
those who now control the party have been caught specu- 
lating with vast sums of the State's money, and all efforts 
to prosecute them have failed, and upon the opinion of a 
most learned lawyer of Philadelphia, who has had before him 
the confessions of high State officials that they had con- 
spired to unlaAvfully take from the State Treasury a large 
sum of money — who said, 'that with their own confession, 
publicly made, and with collateral proof in abundance, they 
were so th ©roughly entrenched behind potent official influ- 
ences and political laws, that the cause of justice would 



STONE'S STATEMENTS PROVEN FALSE. 83 

surely be blocked, and, while their guilt was admitted, a con- 
viction would be out of the question/ 

"To show how utterly impossible it is to break through the 
line of machine guards that are stationed at every approach 
to the State Treasury, it is but necessary to review recent 
history. For months prior to the meeting of the last Legis- 
lature the question of a thorough Treasury investigation was 
agitated. So pronounced was the demand for an honest ex- 
amination of the affairs of the Auditor General's and State 
Treasurer's offices, that it could not be ignored. Ordinarily 
the majority in the Legislature is strong enough to defeat 
any resolution not favored by the leaders, but at the begin- 
ning of the session of 1897 the strength of the anti-machine 
forces was unknown. Orders came not to risk the chances 
of defeating an investigation resolution, but to have one 
offered by a servant of the machine, and have a committee 
appointed, composed of men who know no law but the will 
of their political master, and in this way to hide the secrets 
and incriminating evidence that is believed to abound in 
plenty." 

A LEGISLATIVE FAKE WITHOUT PARALLEL. 

Mr. Wanamaker continued by referring to the work of the 
Treasury investigating committee, which he said will be long 
remembered as a legislative fake and political job without 
parallel. On this subject he said: 

"Senator Kauffman, on March 14, in the Senate offered a 
resolution that was defeated, every Quay Senator voting 
against it. The resolution was as follows: 
" ' Resolved, That if the House concur, the special committee 
appointed to investigate the State Treasurer and Auditor 
General be and is hereby instructed to ask the president and 
cashier of every bank with which State funds are deposited 
the following questions: 

" TIave you within the past twelve months been asked to 
make a contribution in consideration of your bank having 
State funds deposited therein? 

*'^If so, did you make such contribution? 

" ^What per cent, on said deposit was demanded, and what 
per cent, was paid?' 



'i "> 

g4 SPEECHES OP HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"The committee held its few sittings in Harrisburg and 
brought in a voluminous report bearing upon everything but 
the vital points. For the services of this committee the State 
was charged $3,234.81. It gave the Auditor General and 
State Treasurer certificates of character, and complimented 
their excellent business administration, declared that every 
cent of the State's money was accounted for, and no traces of 
irregularities were to be found in the State Treasurer's office. 
Yet later developments disclosed the fact that money had 
been advanced on padded pay rolls, and in another instance 
$10,000 had been advanced, contrary to law, upon the bill 
of a Quay politician, as I am informed." 



SOME BROKEN BANK SECRETS. 



The Story of how the Machine and the Bosses tried to 

bolster up an Insolvent Bank. Laws passed to 

seal the Bank Examiner's lips. How Quay's 

Machine attempted to pass laws to 

allow Politicians to steal State 

Funds. The Infamous And^e^vs' 

Bank Bill that would have 

robbed Depositors and 

Stockholders. 



"Broken Banks, the Chestnut Street National, the People's 
and the Guarantors' Finance Company" was Mr. Wana- 
maker's text on April 15th at Norristown. It was a startling 
revelation to the great audience. Mr. Wanamaker's speech, 
in full, follows: 

"I want to spread before you something of the acts of our 
last Legislature. Most people know no more about the actual 
facts than the present Quay candidate for Governor, who, as 
you well know, declares himself ignorant of the acts of our 
Legislature. 

"Two of Philadelphia's broken financial institutions — ^the 
People's Bank and the Guarantors' Finance Company — stand 
as memorials to political financiering, their empty vaults and 



SOME BROKEN BANK SECRETS. 85 

their poor or worthless assets bear testimony to a system of 
political spoliation that has in the past and will in the future 
undermine many a great banking institution. These failures 
are only the natural results of a reckless disregard of business 
fidelity. These are the outcome of Pennsylvania legislation 
favoring and actually protecting the politician of influence. 
The sense of security that backs the political machine encour- 
ages the misuse of public moneys and consequent transgres- 
sions of the law. It is not necessary to review all the legis- 
lation that has been passed within the last fifteen years and 
which has steadily been building high protective walls around 
the political banker and speculator to prevent the people from 
seeing what is going on with the millions of taxpayers' money 
in the care of the poHticians. To find, or rather get hold of, 
the State money in recent years it would seem quite appro- 
priate to insert an advertisement in the newspapers: ^Wanted, 
to know the whereabouts of the school and hospital money 
supposed to be lost or stolen.' But the Quay organs could not 
be persuaded to publish such an advertisement. 

THE BANKING LAW OF '95. 

"The laws "that have allowed a political machine the free 
use of more than 5,000,000 of dollars per annum of State 
balances for fifteen years, and that force counties heavily in 
debt to turn over vast sums of county money into the State 
Treasury, where it is withheld for months for the benefit of 
the machine, while counties to which it belongs are forced 
to borrow money to pay running expenses, will serve as a sam- 
ple of legislation that has been enacted in the past. I wish 
to-night to take up measures of more recent date, and speak 
to you of laws that must be familiar to all who follow the 
doings of the last Legislature. The failure of the People's 
Bank and the Guarantors' Finance Company was a great 
surprise to many of their officers and stockholders, yet if you 
review with me some of the banking legislation recently at- 
tempted or passed you will be convinced that the politicians 
have known their actual condition for more than two years, 
and have tried to pass laws to protect the bank wrecker. At 



86 SPEECHES OF Hon. JOHN WANAMAKEli. 

the session of '95 a new banking law was passed, which con- 
tained the following clause: 

" 'Neither the Commissioner of Banking nor the Deputy 
Commissioner of Banking nor any employee, shall in any way 
or manner exhibit or divulge or make known any book, paper 
or report pertaining to any corporation under the supervision 
of the banking department, or any information obtained in 
the examination of any corporation, under penalty of a fine 
of one thousand dollars and removal from office/ • 

POLITICIANS OKGANIZED BANKS. 

"This section of the bill aroused much opposition during 
its passage, but the protests of those who saw in this provi- 
sion an attempt to cover up and destroy the alleged objects of 
the bill were unheeded and ignored by orders of the machine. 
I am told that more than a score of State banks have been or- 
ganized in Pennsylvania upon State money furnished by poli- 
ticians. It is through these institutions that the politicians 
carry on large and ofttimes doubtful speculations. The Com- 
missioner of Banking and his assistants have jurisdiction over 
this institution, and they are the only persons to whom the 
questionable and criminal transactions between bank officials 
and politicians can become known. 

"But with usual foresight the politician, by the enactment 
of the banking law, has sealed the Bank Commissioner's lips; 
he may know that money is being stolen; he may know that 
bankers and politicians conspired to rob the people; he may 
know that large sums of money are taken from the State 
Treasury by politicians to furnish speculating capital for cash- 
iers of political banks; he may have in his possession indis- 
putable documentary evidence of criminality, but he must 
hold his peace or forfeit his position; and I assert to-night 
that those who had a hand in framing this particular section 
of the banking law of '95 had advanced knowledge of the 
rotten condition of certain political banks, and of the unlaw- 
ful transactions between officials of said banks and certain 
prominent politicians. Next we come to the session of '97. 
Let us see if we can find anything in the legislation attempted 
by the Quay politicians to substantiate the charges. 



SOME BROKEN BANK SECRETS. 87 

HOW LEGISLATION IS MADE 

"That after legislation has been enacted giving the politi- 
cians the free use of*a]l the State's money they may desire, 
it is plain as a tnrnpike, that law after law has been passed, 
or attempted to be passed, to allow such money to be misap- 
propriated or stolen by the politician with perfect safety to 
himself. In 1895 the broken Guarantors' Finance Company 
began business under the insurance laws of the State. At the 
last session of the Legislature strenuous efforts were made by 
the machine to pass a bill that it could do business without 
interference from the State Insurance Department, providing 
that by a vote of its own stockholders it could amend its char- 
ter and change its class of business. One of Pennsylvania's 
United States Senators went to Harrisburg and lobbied for 
the bill. Every Quay man received his orders to support it 
in defiance of the protests of the Insurance Department. 

"The Anti-Quay men prevented its passage in its original 
form by only three votes. Subsequent developments have 
shown that at the time this United States Senator was direct- 
ing from the Speaker's room the fight for this notorious bill 
and the full power of the machine was being used in its in- 
terests, the Guarantors' Finance Company was insolvent, and 
I assert that the attempt to pass the Guarantors' bill was for 
the purpose of placing it beyond the reach of the official con- 
trol of the Insurance Commissioner, who finally closed the 
doors of the insolvent institution, and that those most active 
in pushing the bill, and they are Quay politicians who are 
heavy creditors of that institution, must have known the 
bankrupt condition of the company. If the Guarantors' bill 
had passed the company's doors would be open to-day, taking 
your money and mine, knowing that it would never be paid 
back. 

THE ANDREWS' BANK BILL. 

"There was another bill. It was known as the Andrews' 
Bank Bill, and was introduced by that eminent financier, 
Senator W. H. Andrews, formerly of Crawford County. This 
bill was to apply to these same political State banks that hold 



88 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

millions of the people's money; the same banks whose imlaw- 
ful transactions cannot be divulged by the State Banking 
Commissioner. The last five lines of the bill: ^Nor shall this 
act apply to any such partnership bank which has already 
closed its doors or gone into liquidation, but shall apply to 
all such banks hereafter making assignments or committing 
acts of insolvency' were inserted because of opposition from 
those who thought it was intended to relieve the Delamaters 
that stand between the aged and the almshouse, the orphans' 
portion and the widows' mite can be taken to pay political 
debts, or to increase the private fortune of the politicians 
who are made free from every legal responsibility by substi- 
tuting in their places men without one dollar in the world. 

"This Andrews bill did not become a law, however. It 
came from a Quay Senate committee unanimously approved, it 
passed the Senate by the vote of every Quay Senator; it was 
favorably reported from a Quay House committee and passed 
two readings, but was placed upon the postponed calendar 
in the House through the efforts of the Anti-Quay men, and 
every attempt by Quay people to pass it finally was defeated. 
By the banking law of 1895 the cover is nailed down tight, 
concealing the transactions of the insolvent People's Bank, 
but if the time ever comes that its transactions shall be made 
public, every voter throughout the length and breadth of the 
Commonwealth will know why Pennsylvania's political boss 
and his chief lieutenants bound and gagged the Banking 
Commissioner by the law of 1895; and when they realize how 
vitally essential it was to Andrews and his political conspira- 
tors to have his bank bill passed they will marvel that it was 
ever defeated. 

"Voters of Pennsylvania, are you dumb and are you blind? 
Is not this one chapter of shame enough to make you strike 
for freedom? You will risk your life to defend your home 
and your property from thieves at night, yet you applaud the 
robbers who by day take millions that belong to you. 

"I remember when a boy seeing a picture of an old farmer in 
a smock frock, getting his drove of pigs to market. He had 
strung around his neck a large bag filled with beans, which 



SOME BROKEN BANK SECRETIS. 89 - 

he kept scattering to the pigs who walked innocently on 
munching beans, but going straight to be slaughtered. 

THE BEAN BAG OF 16 TO 1 . 
"Our astute Senator who farms all Pennsylvania politics and 
attempts murder, political and social, for any who venture 
across his path, carries large supplies of beans. Now he drops 
a post office bean, and another and another and another. When 
it does not satisfy the appetite he drops a pension examiner 
bean, a Consulship bean, a deputy collector bean, U. S. Mint 
bean, deputy marshal bean, deputy attorney bean. Custom 
House bean. Bank Examiner bean, appraiser bean, letter car- 
rier bean. In time the beans will run out, but the plays that 
can be made with a large bean bag if you are dexterous with it 
and do not let the other fellows know, surpass anything Kel- 
lar, the magician, ever did. It is an interesting game, is the 
bean bag of 16 to 1. Some excellent friends say to me what is 
the use of spending your time and wasting your strength on 
fixed-up Montgomery county and other counties of the State. 
I am not wasting my time. I am plowing for the spring 
planting. I am setting out orchards that will be all abloom 
by and by with splendid fruit, and many here will rush to 
share in the golden harvest who are now afraid to stir a step 
or put out their noses lest they will be nipped by the Quay 
frost. 

"Some say you are not a politician. I know it; there are 
men, if I were to shut my eyes and wad my ears, who would 
come into Montgomery county to-morrow and meet boodle 
with boodle. Not a cent of mine or my friends shall go to pur- 
chase a vote or the influence of a newspaper, but I will con- 
fess to you I am deep into the well-organized plan, backed 
by large rewards for informers, and the detectives that will 
be all over the county to-morrow as listeners and watchers 
under the direction of your county committee, to prevent 
fraud and to bring the weak-kneed, whisky-loaded and daring 
violators of the law to prompt justice. 

NOTHING HOPELESS WHEN ONE IS RIGHT. 

"I am not a wasp in speech or action. I am a surgeon, ready 
to make heroic operations to save the patient's life. The pa- 



90 SPEECHES OE tlON. JOU^ ^VA'^\UlAKEn. 

tient is the Eepublican party, born of Lincoln and Grailt, 
mangled, run over and overrun by the Quay- Andrews sacri- 
ficers. They say if you were a politician you would not put 
energy into hopeless counties — where the machine is copper 
fastened. My friends, nothing is hopeless when you are right. 
The harder the toil the stronger must be the arm that wields 
the pick. I never have feared hard work. I like rainy days 
and steep hills because clouds lift and you can see far from 
mountain tops. 

"The coppered-up counties where political changes seem 
impossible will, bj and by, open to the truth, which has been 
in various ways kept from them. The people are right when 
you can get fairly to them — they are led like sheep only be- 
cause they have been accustomed to a beaten path or because 
they follow the bell whether of an office seeker or officeholder. 
It is not that the people do not want to be right, but it is be- 
cause they are fooled by the interested few, who arrange pri- 
maries, fix dates, slate candidates and take all the trouble off 
their hands. 

"This has gone on so long that any interference by the 
people and the ring slaters is resented. To-day there is an 
utter defiance of the people. What they think or do is not of 
the slightest consequence to the Quay- Andrews aristocrats of 
politics. 

QUAY'S SPEECH IN THE SENATE. 

"When Dr. Burchard in the Blaine campaign greeted Mr. 
Blaine, the popular Presidential candidate, at Delmonico's, 
New York, with his Rum-Romanism-Eebellion speech, it was 
set down as the monumental mistake of the age. Is it not an 
equally colossal blunder for our senior Senator, eager for war, 
when, contrary to some of the petitions he was presenting 
to the. Senate, whose signers have indignantly and publicly 
protested at the misrepresentation of them, he argued for and 
urged instant action to plunge the country into war with 
Spain? The three-R speech of Dr. Burchard is bad oiough, 
but the three P's of Quay's speech. Pope, Prelates and Pres- 
byters, is a match. 



OLD SOLDIERS MARKED FOR DEFEAT. 9I 

"The echo of that blundering speech will be far-reaching 
over our State and county. No man, much less Senator Quay, 
has a right to say despising things of Pope, Prelates and Pres- 
byters, insulting the scholarly, upright, honored leader of the 
Eoman Catholic Church, the Bishops of the Episcopal, Mora- 
vian and Methodist Churches, and the old Presbyterian 
Church, whose history is the record of the martyrs for the 
truth, and lives laid down on the battlefields. Mr. Quay 
might have added another P to his anathema for the people 
at large, whom he also scorns and pushes aside as unworthy 
of consideration in forcing machine slates upon them against 
every protest. There is but one P that counts with the boss, 
and it is a double P, that he recognizes and worships — the 
professional politician. But the people are tired of it all and 
are joining their forces to overthrow the usurpers of their 
rights." 



OLD SOLDIERS MARKED FOR 
DEFEAT. 



Crippled Veterans have no show with Quay unless he 

can use them. Some of the brave men turned 

down by the Bosses because they would 

not bow the knee to Quay and 

Andrews. How^ the 

Machine loves the 

old Soldier. 



A delegation of leading Grand Army men went to Lebanon 
with Mr. Wanamaker on the night of April 17th. Mr. Wan- 
amaker himself is a member of Post 2, G. A. R. His speech 
that night, which follows, was devoted to Quay's love of the 
old soldier. 

"My escort hither to-day to Lebanon, your fair city, is by 
a squad of veteran soldiers. I have never been more honored 
in my life. I love the memory of the old soldiers under- 
ground, but I pay homage unspeakable to all who are still 
above ground. Paltry are all the mothering pensions, no 



92 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

matter what they amount to, if there remains lacking dull 
memories of what is due the heroes who carried the old flag, 
stainless and victorious, until every enemy surrendered. 

"Just as the Southern people lived contentedly with the 
institution of slavery that cost millions of precious lives, and 
millions of treasure to eradicate, so Pennsylvania, in large 
part at least, lives contentedly with a political system that 
saps the best life of the individual, stains the home and 
sullies the fair fame of the State at an annual cost of millions 
of tax-gathered treasure, until Pennsylvanians are beginning 
to reaHze that there are some things worse than war. 

"Do you ask me what I mean by these words? Let me tell 
you plainly, and I ask you to particularly listen. The State 
has been torn from the hands of its founders and fathers and 
rightful owners, and appropriated by hirelings who are 
office holders. The administrators of its laws are invaders 
and usurpers, who have seized it, and who hold, through 
trickery and fraud, the places from which laws are inter- 
preted for their own benefit. 

"The farce of law-making is performed mainly by men se- 
lected and sworn to subservience to the bosses. Perpetual 
motion at last has been discovered and established in the 
revolving return of old incumbents to office, if not to the 
same office, to another of equal power. This condition of 
things is of, gradual growth. It began under Cameron, the 
first. It enlarged and grew firmer under Cameron, the sec- 
ond. It has reached its highest development under Quay, 
the first, and his twin brother, W. H. Andrews, perhaps slated 
to be Quay's successor. 

"The necessities of the boss car, that rides over the people 
rough-shod, like the Juggernaut car of India, are such that 
to raise money to keep up the siege against the people and 
to enable office holders to retain place and power, vast sums 
of taxpayers money, belonging to the children and their 
teachers, the indigent, sick and insane and their nurses and 
care-takers, are diverted from their proper uses to aid and 
enrich political schemers. Contracts for buildings for State 
cost double to allow tribute to the tax leech of State and 
other political committees. 



OLD HOLDlERii MARKED FOR DEFEAT. Q3 

CORPORATIONS COMPELLED TO STAND AND DELIVER. 

"Half the legislation at each session of the Legislature 
makes a raid upon the Treasury for the benefit of the in- 
satiate political machine. All the bills that come to the 
door of the Legislature are halted on the front steps with 
a pistol that commands toll for the heartless, conscienceless, 
sleepless sentinels, who are on the watch to replenish every 
empty and unfillable vote buying, bribe making manufac- 
tory. The corporations of the State shiver in constant fear 
of threatening draughts. The contractors despair and di- 
vide without a murmur with the representative of the ma- 
chine. The companions in spoils and in schemes are shaking 
with fear, and speechless, powerless to refuse to rebel against 
any order, no matter how odious. 

"The three C's — corporations, contractors and comrades in 
spoils — can do nothing but stand by each other for mutual 
protection. What matters it if the three P's — Pope, Prelate 
or Presbytery — respectfully petition and dare to protest on 
any subject? Like the common people, they only find out 
how they are publicly despised even from the throne of the 
high court of the Senate Chamber by his Royal Highness, 
the Boss of Pennsylvania. 

"It is a desperate game. The stake has grown so much 
larger year after year, election after election, that there is 
no place to stop. Every bill and every office that has any 
money in it must be made to stand and deliver for the over- 
fed, blood-sucking political vampire that has grown up in- 
side the Republican party. 

"Some Congressional districts must be sacrificed to Repub- 
licanism and given over to Democrats* that our Senators can 
control the patronage. In one such district in our State I 
am informed, and believe the truth can easily be had, that 
the henchmen of the leaders have been selling the post 
offices at a money value for their own benefit or the reim- 
bursing of political debts. 

OLD SOLDIERS SLAUGHTERED AT QUAY'S ORDERS. 

"Notwithstanding the pledge in the National Convention 
platform to prefer the soldiers for places, an old soldier like 



94 SPEECHES OF EON. JOHN WANAMAEER. 

Colonel Stahle, of York county, who carried his county for 
Congress the only time it has been carried in recent years, 
is thrown overboard to elect a Democrat, because he (Stahle) 
would not misrepresent his district by signing for Colonel 
W. A. Stone a paper against his constituents' will, recom- 
mending the name of M. S. Quay for President. Colonel 
George F. Huff, of Westmoreland county, was pitchforked 
out for his independence, to make room for William H. An- 
drews, candidate from Erie, for a similar offense. 

"These two war colonels of splendid record went down at 
the whim of the boss. They did not seem to know that 
great soldiers never surrender their manhood, in war or in 
peace. In all this dust and din and drivel about standing 
by the soldiers, let me ask why not one soldier was acceptable 
when the bosses filled the Collectorship of Internal Revenue, 
the offices of Superintendent of the Mint, Postmaster, Assist- 
ant Postmaster, United States Marshal, Collector of the 
Port and Naval Officer of Philadelphia? 

"Why did they strike off Major Hancock, the old soldier 
with one leg, who fought in eighty battles, and who was 
backed by the old soldiers, and all of his business associates? 
He was urged earnestly for the Collectorship, but it was re- 
fused him by the United States Senate, and given by these 
Senators to one who was not a soldier. 

"Colonel Bosbyshell, an old soldier, was turned aside for 
Mr. Boyer, who served in the Speaker's chair of the last 
Legislature. Why did the leaders bitterly oppose Hackett 
in Philadelphia, who entered the army as a drummer boy? 
Why did they fight so. desperately against Eoney, a soldier 
of unstained record? My friends, the whole thing has such 
a bitter taste it should no lono^er be tolerated." 



M. ^. OOA^ AS A PAfklof. Of) 

M. S. QUAY AS A PATRIOT ! 



How he tried to sell the Government one of Don 
Cameron's buildings for $650,000, when it was 
worth less than $400,000. His attempts to 
defeat President McKinley's policy. 
New^spapers muzzled by Quay and 
his Sub-Bosses. Samples 
of how News is sup- 
pressed. 



Bellefonte, the home of Governors, heard Ex-Postmaster 
General Wanamaker deliver a fiery attack on Senator Quay's 
alleged patriotism on the night of April 19th. In the course 
of his address before an audience of 1500 people he said: 

"I am here to meet this hospitable welcome and carry out 
the programme of the campaign against the oppression of 
usurpers within the borders of our fair State. Neither wars 
without nor treasons within deter me. There must be 
sturdy plowing in the chilly winds of early winter if there is 
to be spring wheat. The winds of Lancaster county blew 
never so heavily and overthrew the one candle Republicanism 
liad burning there. The Montgomery county Quay cavalry 
rode rough-shod over their own children and slaughtered them 
eagerly to open the house of hopes and rewards to strangers 
of the Andrews school. They preferred an emigrant from 
Allegheny to a Montgomery county man, their own neigh- 
bor. It is one of the fortunes of war and absolutely nothing 
to me beyond its proof of the power of a machine. I cannot 
hold the Saturday election against the Montgomery county 
people. It does not represent their wishes, but is the proof 
of the existence of the ever packed primaries. 

QUAY FIGHTING McKINLEY. 

"And while this was going on in the country both our 
Pennsylvania Senators were arrayed against the President 
on the Cuban question and busy using their utmost en- 
deavors to embarrass the President and to defeat the wise 
action of the House. The people of the State will not soon 
forget this dastardly conduct, from which they were only 



96 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

driven when they saw that the last vote would show a ma- 
jority against them. Thus is Pennsylvania disgraced within 
and without her borders. 

^^Colonel W. A. Stone surrendered in his home county for 
one-third of the delegates. I preferred to fight in my home 
county, though I knew in advance the Quay machinists 
would gloat over what they term a victory in scooping in the 
long-owned delegates. But let us step up to the higher level 
of the State's position to-day. Behind us the sunken Legis- 
lature. The wrecked and mangled 'Maine' is a sight of ex- 
quisite beauty in comparison with the battered Lexow docks 
and exploded State bank — guarantors that guaranteed soft 
nests to the legislative birds and the guillotine to the people. 

"I want to speak to one proposition, that the steady demor- 
alization of the Eepublican party in its political management 
has made the Harrisburg Legislature a toll-gate on the 
people's turnpike that no honest man can pass without a 
sneer, and where all men must halt and give the countersign 
of a dividend to the sentinels, however worthy his cause, be- 
fore he can pass on. 

"How many within hearing of my voice realize that the 
great Pennsylvania Republican train, on which they are 
passengers, is plunging onward at a furious rate toward the 
open switches of bankruptcy and ruin? Engineer Quay, mad 
with power, utterly disregarding the danger signs and red 
signals, has opened wide at the tlirottle and determined to 
risk the magnificent train upon the quicksand roadbed of 
political abuses and corruption. He hopes that the train's 
great speed will enable it to keep the rail until after next 
January, and unload him for another six years' term at the 
United States Senate station. His political henchmen act 
as trainmen and conductors. They are taking from you 
many times your honest fares. But though you know you are 
being wronged and robbed, most of you pay without a mur- 
mur, and with the mere belief that it is only party loyalty 
and commendable obedience. 

"The satisfied passengers on this train are made up of four 
distinct classes — first, those who hope to get office; second, 
those who are actuated by cupidity; third, those controlled 



M. S. QUAY AS A PATRIOT. 97 

by fear, and fourth, which is by far the largest, are those 
who make up the great mass of honest people, but who are 
actually ignorant of what is being done by the Republican 
leaders of Pennsylvania. I would not insult your intelli- 
gence by saying you are ignorant of the very things you 
ought to know most about, and which are of vital interest to 
you, if I did not know the fault is not yours, and that the 
sources of information are beyond your reach. There was 
a time when we could boast of a free press, but to-day in 
Pennsylvania, to a great extent, it exists only in name. The 
same political influences that have poisoned the springs of 
public integrity, that have corrupted the politics, that have 
debauched the councils of legislation, that have wrecked 
banks, trust and insurance companies, have contaminated 
and blocked the course of public news. 

HOW THE PRESS IS MUZZLED. 

"Starting at the very head-waters, large numbers of the 
great army of correspondents who first gather the news are 
nowadays hypnotized by the machine. They manufacture 
stuff favorable to the machine, and suppress news that is 
unfavorable. The news that does pass the reporter sentinels 
must then run the gauntlet of news service, where machine 
retainers are often secretly planted upon the management. 
Here the real facts are more thoroughly squeezed out. When 
it reaches the newspaper office it frequently encounters a 
machine-owned editor, or a political guard, located in the 
news room, by whom it is finally suppressed or distorted. 
Scores of editors throughout the State are candidates for post 
offices, and do not furnish the news. Many more have rela- 
tions who expect appointments, and to print facts detri- 
mental to the machine would never do. 

"The attempt to suppress news and to pervert facts is car- 
ried on by the political machine in Pennsylvania by a most 
extensive system. Some of the great telegraph systems are 
no longer safe conductors of private messages. Our friends 
complain that in some places no message of importance is 
sent of which the machine is not advised. The superinten- 
dent of one great company sits in the secret councils of the 



98 8PEECHE8 OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

machine. A few weeks ago a Philadelphian telegraphed to 
a prominent politician in a Western city to meet him on a 
certain day. When the Philadelphian arrived at the place 
named his man was not there, but instead were a half-dozen 
newspaper men, who said they had heard of his coming; one 
reporter going so far as to give the exact language of the 
dispatch that had been sent two days prior. Imagine the 
Philadelphian's surprise a little later to find in the office of 
the friend to whom he had telegraphed, the unopened tele- 
gram. It was a private message, and, owing to the absence 
of the party to whom it was sent, had never been opened, 
yet half a dozen reporters on Quay papers knew its exact con- 
tents. 

"It is alleged that the character of much political news put 
upon telegraph wires is reported at Washington, from where 
orders for suppression are sent if it does not suit the boss. 

"The papers in Pennsylvania that do not belong to the 
syndicate of which I speaji are in the minority; many coun- 
ties have not a single paper that will criticise the wrong- 
doings of the machine, yet they are the supposed educators 
of the people. Is it any wonder, therefore, that there are 
many people in this audience that do not know they are 
being wronged by the effects of Quayism? I would like to 
know how many of the voters in Centre county, who read 
from five to fifteen papers every week, are aware of the official 
acts of their senior United States Senator except the fre- 
quent office-hunting trips he makes to the White House. I 
would like to know if a single one of you have read in your 
papers of a most important amendment to the sundry civil 
appropriation bill, which was offered by Senator Quay in 
the United States Senate on the 4th day of this month. 

A QUAY REAL ESTATE DEAL. 

"Senator Quay moved an amendment that the government 
acquire the structure known as the Union building, in the 
City of Washington, paying therefor the princely sum of 
$650,000. It is alleged in Washington that the property be- 
longed to Ex-United States Senator Don Cameron. . This 
fact was well circulated throughout the Senate and Senator 



M. 8. QUAY A8 A PATRIOT. 99 

Quay made an appeal to his colleagues for the passage of 
the amendment on the grounds of personal Senatorial cour- 
tesy. The highest estimate placed upon the value of the 
building was $400,000, while real estate men said it was 
really worth much less. Yet Senator Quay, in the hour of 
the nation's financial emergency, sought to make the gov- 
ernment pay an extra quarter of a milMon of dollars. The 
proposition was so monstrous that the attempted overcharge 
was attacked by Senators Gallinger and Elkins, and of all 
the members of the United States Senate. Senator Quay, 
with the aid of the great corporate interests that back him, 
could muster but fourteen votes for his amendment. But 
the newspapers could see nothing of interest to their readers 
in Pennsylvania in this assault upon the United States Treas- 
ury. But within the next few days it is telegraphed over 
the entire State that a Pennsylvania Congressman had called 
a colleague a liar and that Senator Quay had asked President 
McKinley for another place for a henchman." 

In conclusion Mr. Wanamaker said: 

"Where elections in a country are likely to go against the 
machine it is a common thing to throw the election Demo- 
cratic, as was the case of your last Legislative election of 
two members, both Quay Democrats. I am one of those who 
cannot go any further with the Eepublican party until it 
does change. A great multitude is rising up to say they are 
of the same mind. I am here contending not for anything 
personal to myself, but to represent an opposition to a system 
that defies public opinion and insists on what the people 
do not want and should not be tricked into by a nomination 
that obliges the people not to vote at all or to vote against 
their consciences." 



100 SPEECHES OF HOlSf. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

HOW THE MINERS WERE BUNCOED. 

The Quay Fake Investigating Committee that did 

nothing and then tried to loot the State Treasury 

on bogus expense bills. A startling array of 

facts. A bill of $11,415.40 for doing 

nothing. An outrage on Coal 

Miners of the State. 



In the heart of the great Northern bituminous coal district, 
at Dubois^ on April 20th, Hon. John Wanamaker before an 
audience of miners, exposed the iniquity of the Quay com- 
mittee to investigate the condition of starving coal miners. 
His detail of facts follows: 

"This splendid audience at this particular time, with the 
public mind preoccupied by war thoughts, is a great wonder 
and gratification to me. Notwithstanding your generous hos- 
pitality I do not take your welcome to myself and friends so 
much as I write it down as an evidence of your interest in 
your old Republican party. The issues I am to discuss are all 
true Republican issues. I am not a discontent and never in 
all my life have been a breeder of mischief. It has always 
been a matter of pride with me that I could work with men, 
some of those who began with me in business are not only 
my employees to-day after thirty years and more, but are my 
close personal friends. That man is a weak man who consents 
to be deaf and dumb to his own faults and the faults of his 
family, and who shrieks disloyalty to such friends who are 
friends enough to try to help him to the right course. 

INVESTIGATING COAL MINERS' CONDITION. 

"At the last session of the Legislature, Senator Quay had it 
within his power to aid the miners of Clearfield county. Rep- 
resentative McWhinney, of Alleghetiy, a true friend of the 
miners of Pennsylvania, offered in the House a resolution 
setting forth the deplorable condition prevailing through the 
bituminous coal regions of Pennsylvania, which was as fol- 
lows: 

" 'Whereas, During the past three or four years the indus- 
trial condition in the bituminous coal mining regions com- 



HOW THE MINERS WERE BUNCOED. IQl 

prised within what is commonly termed the Pittsburg district 
of Pennsylvania has continued to grow, and is still growing, 
so desperate as to cause several thousands of our citizens to be 
at present on the verge of starvation; and 

*' ^Whereas, There are at present other thousands who are 
pressing very hard on the capacity of the township and coun- 
ty charities of that district, and who would have probably 
perished were it not for the intervention of those charities; 
and 

^* Whereas, This condition gives every promise of contin- 
uing until those charities are exhausted; and 

" *Whereas, The fear exists that when such stage is arrived 
at there may be many worthy citizens and their families suf- 
fer the pangs of hunger and destitution to the point of actual 
starvation; and 

^' 'Whereas, These citizens thus affected are among the most 
willing, frugal, industrious and worthy of our laboring popu- 
lation; and, 

" 'Whereas, This condition has been brought about by a 
guerilla warfare, precipitated and continued by certain cor- 
poration interests in that district, many of whom even seem 
to have entered into politics, which are not only bringing this 
destitution upon their employees, but ruin upon their own 
business; and, 

" 'Whereas, Every possible expedient has been attempted by 
the public-spirited and humanely-disposed people of that dis- 
trict, including several newspaper editors of the city of Pitts- 
burg; and, 

" 'Whereas, There is an abundance of evidence to be had 
that the conditions above mentioned exist and are becoming 
daily still more alarming; therefore be it 

" 'Resolved (if the Senate concur), That a committee con- 
sisting of three members from the House of Representatives, 
to be appointed by the Speaker, and two members of the Sen- 
ate, to be appointed by the President pro tempore, be author- 
ized to visit said Pittsburg district and make a thorough in- 
vestigation of the actual condition of affairs in said mining 
region and report to the Legislature their finding and recom- 
mend in their report what, in their opinion, might be done to 



102 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

alleviate the deplorable condition aforesaid, and to recom- 
mend such measures as in their judgment they deem best to 
correct the evil complained of. The said committee to serve 
without compensation, except the actual expenses incurred by 
them in prosecuting such investigation, not including any ex- 
pense on account of time given to such investigation, and ste- 
nographer and clerk hire to be provided for by an item in 
the general appropriation bill or by special act making an ap- 
propriation therefor, and the said committee shall have the 
power to summon and subpoena witnesses and compel by pro- 
cess their attending before them to give evidence in like man- 
ner as any court of record, and the said committee is hereby 
empowered in their discretion to call to their assistance for 
the purpose of aiding them in the fullest investigation possi- 
ble three citizens, representative of the interests under in- 
vestigation, or by reason of their knowledge of existing condi- 
tions, capable of assisting said committee in the discharge of 
their duties, one of whom shall be an official representative of 
the mine operators and one a representative of the public 
press of the city of Pittsburg. This committee, shall report 
the facts to this Legislature not later than Monday, April 
19, 1897.' 

"The resolution placed the naming of the committee in the 
hands of Quay's Speaker of the House, who appointed four 
Quay men, being compelled to select McWhinney as a mem- 
ber of the committee because he was the author of the reso- 
lution. They demonstrated that they dared take no chances 
on a chairman whom they could not control, and who might 
discover in the course of an investigation things detrimental 
to certain corporate interests. They violated a long-establish- 
ed and heretofore inflexible parliamentary rule, that the au- 
thor of a resolution creating an investigating committee shall 
be made the chairman of said committee, by turning down 
Mr. McWhinney, the one true friend of the miners of the 
committee over to Senator Saylor. 

HOW THE MINERS WERE FOOLED. 
"Senator Quay's Legislatures in the past have appointed like 
committees for political buncombCj and to manufacture cam- 



HOW THE MINERS WERE BUNCOED. 103 

paign dust to throw in the eyes of the workingmen; but it 
remained for the Saylor investigating committee to make the 
same false pretenses that former committees have made, and 
more, while on a mission of mercy, and in the very midst of 
underpaid, poorly-clad and half-starved and ill-housed miners 
seek unlawfully to recompense himself and his Quay col- 
leagues on the committee. This committee that came to you 
under charity's mask made a report back to a Quay Legisla- 
ture of a most general character, and making certain general 
recommendations. Senator Quay was in absolute control of 
the Legislature— he owned the committees — and could have 
had reported and passed laws to alleviate your distress, to 
right your wrongs and dispel the clouds of want and suffering 
that have so long hung over the soft coal fields of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

''But instead his Legislature received the report of the com- 
mittee with utter indifference, and no effort was made to pass 
a law to benefit the condition of the miner. This was not all, 
for the Quay committee that was to serve without pay charged 
the State $11,415.40, of which Chairman Saylor's share was 
to be $1,791.20 for alleged expenses, that he afterward was 
forced to acknowledge in public was a fraudulent claim. This 
committee came to you, cloaked as a messenger of mercy, 
but their mercenary instincts overpowered them, and from 
the very men who were crying for relief they attempted to 
extort an additional tax to pay for expenses that had never 
been incurred. An act of such disgusting baseness would 
have placed the mark of disgrace upon the brow of every man 
connected with it in any State but that of Pennsylvania. 

"In Pennsylvania such acts are applauded and rewarded. 
In Pennsylvania a premium is placed upon them. Chairman 
Saylor has been rewarded by Senator Quay with a Consulate 
to Matanzas, paying $3,500 a year. He did the boss' bid- 
ding—he had deceived the miners, he had protected the cor- 
poration, he had tried to rob the State— his claims for his 
master's support could not be ignored. Without the know- 
ledge of Mr. McWhinney an item for $1,015 was inserted m 
the expense bill for him. He repudiated the item on the floor 



104 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

* 

of the House, and stated that it had been placed there with- 
out his knowledge, and that he had attended every meeting 
of the committee, and it had not cost him a dollar. There 
was another member of the last Legislature whose name is a 
household word with every miner in the State. It was he 
who stood against the great corporations of the State and 
championed the cause of the workingmen. I speak of Sena- 
tor C. C. Kauffman, of Lancaster county. He was your cham- 
pion, he was the taxpayers' friend, he was honest. He was 
defeated by the boss' orders. Saylor tried to rob you. He was 
rewarded. Kauffman fought for you and aided you. He 
was defeated. Both by the orders of Senator Quay. 

"Adam started pretty well in the sunlight of a garden in 
Paradise, but since his day the steps downward are common 
to people and parties. The Eepublican Party was a kind of 
patriotic Paradise, but its fathers are sleeping at Springfield 
and Cleveland and Eiverside Park. They are in martyrs' 
graves all over the States. Their sons, with few exceptions, 
have become intoxicated with the wealth of peace and the 
ship of state drifts into the breakers as if she were unmanned 
and without a compass. 

"Standing at the wheelhouse, the old ship rocking in the 
gale. President McKinley at Washington called out to the 
engine room of the Capitol of the dangers ahead on the Cuban 
shore, where the ^Maine' men sleep until the long roll-call. 
Some of the old Senate speculators apparently unconscious 
of the grave situation of affairs, scorned their Eepublican 
garments and took sides with the President's enemies. Sad 
it is to say it, and sadder to be the truth. Among these foes 
of the President were our two Pennsylvania Senators, and re- 
mained so until driven out of their dishonoring position when 
in sight of the last vote about to go against them, when they 
hurried in from the enemy's camp. Do you think Thaddeus 
Stevens would have done that, or James G. Blaine or Benja- 
min Harrison? God send us again men unbargaining, un- 
speculating, unswerving in such an hour from the patriotic 
and straight path. 

'^very day but deepens the shadows that fall upon the Ee- 
publican party in other States as well as ours. It will be 



HOW THE MINERS WERE BUNVOED. JQS 

enough for us to attend to our own business, and that we must 
attend to or the Republicans of Pennsylvania are doomed for 
years, if not forever. The Democrats are not always to be 
triflers, disputers or to be caught with a silver hook. Eepub- 
licans who have come on since the days of Fremont and Lin- 
coln, Grant and Garfield — the younger men who had not the 
living inspiration of those great lives — do not place the halo 
that we love to look at around the Republican flag. They see 
the old carpet-baggers in the South, contractors, syndicates 
and corporations in control and consummate skill of politi- 
cians in possession of the government at the North. 

"The glamour of old-time patriotism is faded out and the 
glory of Republican achievement is all in books. One by one 
the young men, discouraged and hopeless, leave the party of 
their fathers and scoff at good in any party. To the self-re- 
warding, scheming and speculating in offices and legislation 
is our pai-ty given over. But Pennsylvania, so great without 
realizing it, capable of homing ten millions, fathers less 
than six; Pennsylvania, of immense possibilities, close to the 
gates of the sea, rich in uncounted stores of iron and coal, 
richer still with her manufacturing talent and capital — 
Pennsylvania is the plodding, poor, political centre of the 
United States. The key of its low life is struck by its Legis- 
lature, the synonym of misdoing all the States over. 

YOU PAY YOUR MONEY FOR LEGISLATION. 

"The Legislature as a Legislature is behind a counter and 
whoever lays down the money can get his pick out of any 
sized pattern of legislation, of which there is an ingenious 
and ever-increasing assortment. The taxpayers' hard-earned 
money is squandered in scores of ways. Even the closing of 
some of the public schools is considered to benefit the pro- 
tected brewers under contract for money given to campaign 
conducting when the Legislature is meeting. Endless schemes 
are hatched for the purpose of taking money out of the Trea- 
sury to fill the pockets of committeemen and campaigners. 
General Mxation of dl\ business interests is decreed to pay 
an army of new appointments. 



106 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Even the premier of the Capitol and the chairman of the 
State Committee, an assistant in one of the State depart- 
ments, are obliged in deference to public opinion and by com- 
mand of the Governor to resign their places for conspiring 
with the State Treasurer to cover np the withdrawal of a large 
sum of State money. The catalogue of crimes centering at 
the Capitol all done by sworn and unfaithful public servants 
is the wonder of the time, but there is a still greater wonder. 
It is that these same people who have failed in their trust, 
these very same men who for themselves and their friends 
manage the Eepublican party, are now asking for a vote of 
confidence, and renewal of power at the coming June and 
other conventions and the autumn elections. 

"They ask you and me to dismiss and forget their assaults 
upon the Treasury; to shut our eyes to the People's Bank 
calamity and the Guarantors' rottenness and put them all 
back into power as if nothing had happened; to give them a 
Governor who belongs to their craft, whom Andrews and 
Quay can govern, and elect a Legislature that will work with 
the Quay selected and elected Treasurer, and they will farm 
everything to suit themselves. I am here to raise my voice 
against it and warn the people as I did when we postponed 
the Cleveland panic four years by the election of Harrison. 
I can now see just as plainly the coming degradation and 
loss to Pennsylvania if she jumps the Quay jump and dances 
the Andrews jig this year by adopting the machine slate. 

"I will go to war any minute on the call of the Secretary 
of War, to whom I have offered my services, and I am now 
enlisted and willing to continue the war with you in Pennsyl- 
vania, carrying a flag that no man Quay and Andrews own 
can fill any office in Pennsylvania. I make no candidates, 
but as a citizen with the common right that you and all citi- 
zens have I pass judgment on the kind of candidates we will 
not have. Let us get men for public place. Pennsylvania has 
plenty of them who will attend to the business of the people 
honestly, keep the money safely and raake it go as far as pos- 
sible for the people's good. Work people get their money by 
the sweat of their brow. It comes too hard to fritter away." 



THE INFAMOUS LEXOW EXPENSES. 107 

THE INFAMOUS LEXOW EXPENSES. 

A Committee appointed by Quay's orders that cost 

$1,156.28 every time it met— Witnesses who 

were summoned at $93.28 per head. 

All the figures in the Notorious 

Bill exposed— A History of 

the Quay Machine 

from first to 

last. 



■ Mr. Wanamaker tore the mask from the notorious Lexow 
bill of expenses at a great meeting held at Clearfield, April 
21st. People cheered to the echo. He also gave a history 
of the Quay machine from beginning to end. His speech 
in full is as foUows: 

HOW QUAY AND STONE FOUGHT McKINLEY. 

"Last night at Dubois, in the wettest of wet nights, great 
crowds of men jammed the Opera House, and in the course 
of a speech suddenly rose en masse amid much enthusiasm 
and showed sympathy with and loyalty to the President in 
this trying hour. It was a dramatic moment, but two men 
of the thousand or more remained seated. They represented 
the two Pennsylvania Senators, Quay and Penrose, who sat 
where Quay did before and after McKinley's nomination— 
against him. They, personally, and with the assistance of 
Congressman Young, of Philadelphia; and Davenport of 
Erie, led by Colonel W. A. Stone, of Allegheny, the candi- 
date for Governor, did their utmost to turn away Congress 
from supporting the President. 

"Until the last vote when they saw their plight and were 
overborne by friends to change front to McKinley they per- 
sisted in their endeavors. To their lasting shame they stood 
in with the Democrats and Populists — Tillman, of South 
Carolina; Jones, of Arkansas; Mallory, of Florida, and Vest, 
of Missouri. How do you like your Senators joining forces 
with Democrats and Populists while unselfish Americans, 
Democrats by party affiliation, like Caffery, of Louisiana; 
Gorman, of Maryland; Gray, of Dekiware, and Morgan, of 



108 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

Alabama, all Democrats, threw aside questions of party and 
partisanship and stood behind the President like a stonewall? 

"For over thirty years in the politics of the Kepublican 
party of Pennsylvania a sand bar has been forming. The 
wisest captains of the party, like James G. Blaine, saw it, 
and begin ringing the bell of warning. In recent years the 
sand bar has become the dumping ground of all that is rep- 
rehensible and debasing in the Kepublican party, combina- 
tions of corporations, syndicates of subsidized newspapers, 
sworn subjection of office holders, exactions from legislative 
bills, extortions from manufacturers, assessments upon State 
and national banks for election purposes without reference 
to stockholders, until an impassable cliff has risen, and there 
is no more fair sailing or progress for the EepubUcan party. 

"Somebody is responsible for this. Who is it? To get the 
answer go back to where the train shunts from the track. It 
is a small and almost imperceptible divergence from the 
main line, but each mile and moment the distance widens. 
To-day the main line of the Eepublican party, its two tracks 
of man's inalienable right to vote and have his vote honestly 
counted, can hardly be seen any more than the route of the 
old Pennsylvania Canal that cut through the State. The 
old Kepublican stations of Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Blaine 
have sunk into the tombs. New stations have been built in 
Pennsylvania. The Quay, Andrews, W. A. Stone and Saylor 
stations have been reared in splendor by contractors with 
iron interests, steel, oil, sugar, whisky, corporation grants 
and the like. 

"The treasury station is the grand central depot through 
which all the trains are bound. The Republican party prin- 
ciple is a fat wallet, and its backbone nowadays is its office 
rewards. Kauckle down from your knees to your nose and 
pay up spot cash is tiie one password not only to preferment 
but to right to lile unaasailed in your party. 

"You ask me to explain how this condition of things has 
come about. I will try to do so. Great as were the benefits 
of the civil war in delivering the nation from the CHrse of 
slavery there oame with the raising and maintenance of 
armiee and navies and the re-establishment of goyemment 



THE INFAM0V8 LEXOW EXPENSES. 109 

in the South great opportunities for the play of merciless 
politicians and soulless speculators. Men enriched over night 
in supplying arsenal stores and HI ling ammunition contracts 
reached out with money for placecj of power. Simon Camer- 
on was Pennsylvania's chief and he laid the foundation of 
a political structure that was frescoed throughout with in- 
scriptions that the spoils belonged to the victors and the 
most active of the victors must have the largest and best 
chair, irrespective of everything. 

"The party, restive under the Simon Cameron rule, pressed 
the old Scotchman out, but he was adroit and powerful 
enough to put his rich son into the Senate as his succcessor. 
The same tactics of political management practiced by the 
father were continued by the son until Quay rose from the 
delinquent tax office in Philadelphia to State Treasury fame 
and then to step into the United States Senate. 

THE RISE OF THE MACHINE. 

"With this the rapid decline in real Eepublicanism began 
and Quayism spread like thistles over the State, to be the 
enemy of good government. The thistle is the foe of the 
farmer. Quayism is a system in Pennsylvania that is built 
on the patronage — National, State and County. Down to 
the smallest borough place up to the largest post office ap- 
pointment, every man who gets a place must make obeisance 
to the bosss. The Congressmen, State Senators and Repre- 
sentatives only get through the door to position by the Quay 
password. 

"Each office holder becomes a servant of the machine. If 
he owns a newspaper it must support the machine and ex- 
clude even the news to keep back anything derogatory to the 
Quay tactics. The straits which a man in the service is 
driven to to corral his relations and his bank and his connec- 
tions of every kind for the boss is ludicrous as well as sad. 

"It is illustrated by the absence of many men from such 
town meetings as this, lest it will be reported to the Quay 
inquisitorial chamber, and put them on the rack and jeopar- 
dize their standing with the 'Old Man.' 



110 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

"But this is not all. The most terrible of all the forms of 
ruination used to-day to control the Eepublican party, its 
offices and honors, and maintain the patent upon everything 
is the reckless and lavish use of money to carry elections. To 
provide the money has become one of the most wonderful of 
the arts. Every corporation of the State that has ever had 
legislation, or that ever hopes to have it, is laid under tribute. 

"Proposed legislation that steps up to Harrisburg for proper 
authority is stopped at the threshold and put into the cold 
storage until a good portion of capital is provided for the 
Quay election bank. The State banks, formed in many in- 
stances to manipulate State deposits, play into the Quay elec- 
tion banks. ,A11 the banks that get deposits of the State 
money, get it only with a string that is pulled when elections 
are going on. Divide, divide, livide, is the cry to contract- 
ors, corporations, place seekers. With all the indefatigable 
financiering done by the Eepublican managers, the constant 
deficits occasion a nightmare that leads to schemes of investi- 
gating committees, commissions of various kinds created to 
take money from the Treasury, bills, guarantors of protective 
legislation and similar plots. 

"I will give you a few examples. The Lexow bill for 
$65,000. This Lexow bill concerns the whole State, though 
the expenses were incurred by a bogus investigation of Phila- 
delphia affairs. But Senator Quay and his bosses propose 
to make the whole State pay for his attempt to frighten a 
few men in Philadelphia into making terms with him, 
William H. Andrews, late of Crawford county and the mar- 
ager of William A. Stone's campaign was chairman of th ,t 
committee and prepared this expense bill. The commitf ie 
only sat once in a while, and if all of its sessions were lumped 
they would not amount to over thirty full days of actual 
work. Yet their bill was $65,908.96. 

THE LEXOW BILL EXPENSES. 

"And here are some of the items that you people are asked 
to pay: Expenses for witnesses, mileage and fees, $28,071.06; 
stenographers, $9,812.25; expert witnesses, $4,951.16; biH at 



THE INFAMOUS LEXOW EXPENSES. m 

Hotel Walton, $5,912.40; clerk hire and detectives, $5,162.09; 
attorneys' fees, $12,000. 

*'The Committee held fifty-seven meetings at a cost of 
$65,908.96, or $1,156.28 per session. The committee was in 
session 137 hours at a cost of $481.08 per hour. Just 436 
witnesses were examined at a total cost of $32,022.22, or at 
the rate of $75.73 per witness. Compare this princely pay 
with the witness fees paid in Clearfield county. 

"The expenses of the committee at the palatial Hotel "Wal- 
ton, in Philadelphia, because only the best hotel and accom- 
modations will satisfy the bosses, for 57 sessions were 
$5,912.40, or a cost of $103.72 per meeting for hotel ex- 
penses alone, a rate of $23 per day for each Senator present. 

"The bill of the stenographer employed was $9,812.25, or 
an average of $172.14 per session. At this rate the com- 
mittee paid $71.62 per hour to its stenographer. Thousands 
of shorthand operators would be delighted to get that for 
a month's work what this Lexow committee paid for an 
hour's work. As there were 436 witnesses examined, the 
stenographer got or he will get, if Senator Quay can elect his 
man for Governor, $22.50 for reporting the testimony of 
each witness. If you add the stenographer's charge of 
$22.50 per witness to the average cost for mileage and fees 
for each witness, viz., $75.73, you have the sum of $98.23, 
which it cost the Lexow committee to summon and examine 
each witness. And you, the people of Clearfield county, are 
expected to pay this bill incurred by M. S. Quay and "William 
H. Andrews, the political sponsor of "William A. Stone. 

"The counsel fees for the Lexow committee, the sum 
charged by the three lawyers employed by the committee, 
though there were at least two lawyers members of the com- 
mittee, were $210.53 per meeting." 



112 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WAN AM ARE R. 

HOW THE TREASURY IS LOOTED. 



The devices resorted to to get the People's Money. 
Enormous increase in State expenses, amount- 
ing to nearly $2,000,000 in the past four 
years — Fat fees for favored Lawyers 
in Contested Election Cases. 
The notorious Attempt to 
work the Insurance 
Companies. 



The people of Phillipsburg, Centre County, packed the 
Opera House from pit to dome, to hear Mr. Wanamaker on 
the night of April 22d. His speeeh,which was a terrible 
arraignment of the machine methods of robbing the Treas- 
ury, is as follows: 

"The ingenious schemes and devices employed by the politi- 
cal machine to take large sums of money from the State Trea- 
sury under the guise of regularity are something most amaz- 
ing. Official figures show that the average increased cost of 
running the three departments of the State government each 
two years since 1894 is $976,593.20, or about 43 per cent, 
more than the average cost for the six previous years. How 
much of this increase represents necessary or honest expendi- 
ture it is impossible to say, as the system of book-keeping 
is such that it would be practically impossible to separate the 
wheat from the chaff, even if we were accorded the privilege 
of examination, which in most cases we are not. The last 
Legislature appropriated $68,500 for contingent expenses to 
the different State departments, which were not itemized and 
were voted for blindly. 

'T. am sure if it were possible to analyze the expenditure of 
this money that the results would furnish interesting reading. 
There are the political attaches who perform no actual duties, 
who are carried permanently on the pay roll under the pro- 
tection of the law, such as engineers, on salaries of $16.50 a 
week for two years. The Capitol buildings for two years have 
been heated by steam from a steam heating plant from the 
city. Though there are no engines to run nor fires to build. 



HOW THE TREASURY IS LOOTED, 113 

these political mechanics hold down benches around "Capitol 
Hill" or go home to their respeetive counties to assist in prim- 
ary elections. 

THE CONTESTED ELECTION DODGE. 

"The machine's latest use of the contested election law as a 
method of abstracting large sums from the State Treasury 
reached high-water mark at the last session of the Legislature. 
Northampton county demanded the magnificent sum of $33,- 
813.80 for expenses for two contests alone. In the Heller- 
Laubach case the committee's hotel bill was $2,207.55. Their 
book-keeper wanted $1,035. For the personal expenses of 
the contestants they asked $12,042.75. Under the machine 
construction of the law an election contest may set up regard- 
less of merits and furnish clerkships and places for the faith- 
ful without number. The contestants who have favor with the 
machine are certain to be seated without regard to right or 
wrong, and in addition to legal salary they are allowed large 
sums for personal expenses. 

"The most remarkable feature of this machine practice is to 
give also to the party who is declared by the finding of the com- 
mittee to have had no claim upon a seat a large sum for per- 
sonal expenses. This is as yet a comparatively undeveloped 
field. It is a new Klondike that affords great opportunities 
for the machine. And a machine-owned Governor can so 
stimulate the work in this field that every close county in the 
State can have one or more contests. Think of the fat coun- 
sel fees for Quay attorneys, clerkships for Quay henchmen 
and big expense bills for Quay contestants. The elasticity 
of the law, under machine manipulation, is something great. 
The same legal machinery that is used to give seats to the 
faithful is employed to take seats away from the unfaithful 
where the same state of facts exist. 

"R. Lincoln Eoberts, an anti-Quay man, was elected a mem- 
ber of the last Legislature from Philadelphia. He was asked 
to support the machine candidate for United States Senator 
and refused. He was asked again and again but stood firm. 
When he reached Harrisburg he was waited on by a very pro- 



114 SPEECHES OF HON, JOHN WANAMAKER. 

minent politician and told that if he did not support the 
machine candidate he would lose his seat in the Legislature. 
He again boldly refused. The gentleman made good his threat. 
A contest was started and by high-handed methods Mr. Eob- 
erts, a Eepublican, and fairly elected, was obliged to vacate 
his seat in the Legislature for a Quay Democrat. To do this 
job a Quay committee attempted to get $6,906.14 of the tax- 
payers' money. 

"You have all heard so much of investigating committees 
in a general way. Let us go a little into detail and see some 
of the self-fixed values your representatives have placed upon 
themselves. I wish to make the sweeping statement that no 
investigating committee appointed at the last session of the 
Legislature accomplished any good and those that were not 
frauds and fakes were failures. Chief among the fakes was 
the committee to investigate the management of the State 
Treasury. It found nothing irregular, nothing to criticise, 
nothing to recommend. Their report had scarcely been 
adopted when the State Treasurer confessed that large sums 
of money had been advanced without authority of law. For 
the while this was used to cover up the mismanagement of 
this department the State was charged $4,734.81. The 
few meetings the committee held were all in Harrisburg, and 
on days that the Legislature was in session. 

"Fake No. 2 was to investigate rumors that certain State 
Senators, one of whom was Quay's chosen chief of the Senate, 
had demanded $50,000 of a New York insurance company to 
kill an insurance bill. The star chamber meetings of this com- 
mittee were most effective in handling a bad mess. So well 
was it handled that until this day the name of a Senator who 
was most intimately connected with the story has not appear- 
ed in any paper in Pennsylvania, though every member of 
the Legislature knew his name. He is now a candidate for 
Lieutenant Governor and claims to have the support of Sena- 
tor Quay. 

"The anthracite and bituminous investigating committee 
accomplished no good for the miners, but only demonstrated 
how much of your money a Quay committee would take if 



HOW THE TREASURY 18 LOOTED. 115 

it got a chance. The anthracite committee asked for $11,- 
987.43. The bituminous committee, chairmaned by Senator 
Taylor, asked for $11,415.40. The chairman^s charge for car 
fare to Pittsburg six times, if I am not mistaken, was some- 
thing over $1,700. He acknowledged afterwards that it was a 
fraudulent charge. Then there was the dairy and food in- 
vestigating committee that had less evidence when it got 
through than when it commenced. They did succeed in al- 
lowing every witness in Pennsylvania who knew anything 
about the alleged investigations of that department to escape 
from the State before they were subpoenaed. 

"One member of that committee is from your county and he 
can tell you many things I will not. I remember his mileage 
was $594. The chairman of the committee, Eepresentative 
Hoosac, of Pittsburg, one of the seventy-six, refused to make 
any charge for car fare, but for all the Quay members made 
the bill $7,712.84. The report of the Penitentiary investi- 
gating committee was so thoroughly outrageous that it was 
repudiated by the Legislature. They asked for $14,893.14. 
It was reduced by the anti-Quay men in the House and the 
Governor to $4,172.49, a cut of $10,720.66. 

"There are differences among the American people, but un- 
derneath all the things that separate us there lies the bed 
rock of patriotism. It is on this we stand together to-night. 
In your mills you are squaring logs for the building of homes 
and structures of business, and at the same time, in your pub- 
lic spirit you have squared up fine timber in the form of 
sturdy men to build a -political party to direct the govern- 
ment of the State and nation. Our first architects were Abra- 
ham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, James A. Garfield and James G. 
Blaine. The building of the Eepublican party was well on its 
way, but accidents occurred and the old plans were lost. Ar- 
chitects Cameron, Quay and Andrews have made a sorry mess 
of it, and the question up and down the State is whether it 
is best to take the toppling building down, or underpin it and 
rebuild it. That it cannot stand as it is is the generally ac- 
cepted verdict. The new architects do not want anything 
•aid About it lest the people are alarmed. 



116 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

QUAY GOLD BRICKS. 

'^The mischief seems to have arisen from Quay gold bricks, 
Andrews quicksand and legislative lime. There are bad leaks 
from the Treasury, and the office holders, never more devoted 
to their chief, stand by impotent and useless in stopping the 
outflow of taxpayers' money. The alarmed people, seeing an- 
other Johnstown flood coming, are aroused. Taxpayers, quite 
willing to be taxed for all just purposes, axe gathering to erect 
a dam to stop the waste of their hard earnings. This meeting 
is in that interest. We are Eepublicans, who believe that our 
temple of liberty can yet be saved if prompt measures can be 
taken. 

"The first need is to change Architect Quay. He has been 
tried for twenty years, and his work grows worse and wor&e. 
Recently he openly, as individual and by conspiracy of his 
under-appointees — Davenport, of Erie, and Young, of Phila- 
delphia, headed by Division Boss W. A. Stone, of Allegheny 
— made public battle against the chief architect, Wm. McKin- 
ley, the President of the works. Master Builder W. H. An- 
drews, once of Crawford, and now of Allegheny, while build- 
ing a Governor for the Capitol, is too expensive, except for 
the Lexow trade. 

^^e are now taking steps to secure a new architect for the 
State. The business of preparation is the weeding of our gar- 
dens, and that must begin at the front gate. Then we need 
to weed straight along to the back fence. Each man must 
take a hand. The next lot to be weeded is primary comer. 
In this we must plow with delegates that must be carefully 
selected. If the plows have the Quay stamp they will be no 
good. The large part of the work and almost all the round 
up, though not absolutely certain to be so, is on convention 
hill. A stiff wind blows there^ and it is not always easy for 
one to keep his feet. Tangled weed and gooseberry bushes 
are thick and make it hard to get on. 

"The principal weeds are post office wild parsnips. Some 
know how to turn these into money; others drop the com all 
around for months previous to election. Bushes, also tall 
wcedf with beans, sometimes called Harrisburg rounders. 



HOW THE TREASURY IS LOOTED. II7 

These beans are mostly poisonous. They make men stagger 
who never reeled from rectitude before. Even the smell of 
these beans sometimes leads a man to forswear his manhood 
and stand him up against his old and best friend. Perhaps an 
illustration will serve. 

A POINTED ILLUSTRATION. 

"Two old New England college mates kept up their old 
chum life, though living a distance apart, by an annual visit. 
They were extremely fond of fishing, and, denied of each 
other's company, one of them, after a fine day's sport, re- 
solved to take to his old friend in the city a fine salmon he 
had caught. His wife wrapped it carefully in a white cloth 
and put it in a basket, and the old deacon got up into his 
wagon for an all day's drive to his friend's home, where he 
was to stay all night. At midday he stopped at a country 
tavern by the roadside for his midday meal, and while talking 
told his old and well-known friends of his errand to town. 

"One of them, to have a joke, while he was eating, took the 
old man's basket, removed the salmon and put in its place a 
mackerel. In the evening, after dinner in town with his 
friend, chatting and smoking in the library, the old deacon 
sent for his basket, took out the bundle, unrolled the cloth, 
and, to his astonishment and disgust, found the salt mackerel. 
Greatly disappointed by what he could not explain, his visit 
was spoiled and next morniaig lie began his journey home. 
He stopped again for dinner at the tavern, where he told the 
story of his wife's mistake in doing up the fish, whereupon 
the landlord slipped away, removed the mackerel and replaced 
it with the salmon. The old deacon went home and told his 
wife his story. She was thunderstruck, could not believe 
it, sought the basket, unrolled the package, and the salmon 
was t-here just as she had first placed it. The old deacon looked 
on and finally gave way in language about like this: ^ell, 
you are a splendid fat salmon when you are at home, but 
when you go to Boston you are the meanest old blasted mack- 
erel I ever saw.' 

"This is the eaaet effect produced by the hili bushes — the 
Senate and House bills. Other weeds are the low snake grass, 



118 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

also Tindergrowtli; Saylor snap weed, birdbook creeper, bank 
sucker and children's nettles. The last two species of weeds 
were very harmful last year in this State and have been so 
for many years. The bank species easily twist about people's 
legs and trip them up. They thrive on taxpayers' deposits, 
and are found at almost all points throughout the State. 
They have almost destroyed the peace and comfort of the 
whole Commonwealth. Two men have been recently killed 
and large numbers wounded, some beyond recovery." 



HOW QUAY FOUGHT McKINLEY. 

Was a Member of the Senatorial Combination at 

"Washington to defeat President McKinley's 

wishes — The meetings in Quay's room. 

His double dealing and telegraph 

messages — The sale of Post 

Offices — Places sold like 

farm produce. 



When Ex-Postmaster General Wanamaker carried his cam- 
paign for honest government into West Chester, the county 
seat of Chester County, on the night of April 28th he found 
a packed and enthusiastic audience awaiting him. He said: 

"The chief object my friends had in inviting me to speak 
to you this evening was to discuss with you subjects con- 
nected with the State government of Pennsylvania. Penn- 
sylvania has fallen from her old-time greatness. The story 
is a long one — forty years long. It is the work of a trium- 
virate, father, son and pupil. The conspirators entail their 
hard conditions upon the State, and these conditions grow 
heavier and threaten to overpower the people for the sake 
of politicians and corporations. 

"Outright fraud in elections, open bribery of legislators, 
outrageous transactions with taxpayers' money on pay-rolls, 
overcharges by public servants and contractors are not only 
common scandal, but uncommon loss to our badly-governed 
ftnd overtaxed people. 



HOW QUAY FOUGHT McKINLET. 119 

"The recent revelations to the public of vast sums of the 
public money exposed to loss in the Chestnut Street Bank 
after common warning and the tragedy that drew aside the 
curtains of the People's Bank, supposed to contain over half 
a million dollars of tax paid money, until the curtains were 
quickly drawn back again by its president, who pitifully pays 
for the silence held to be a part of the programme of Penn- 
sylvania politicians, are not new to you. 

"In November, 1861, when the war was hardly under way 
and gross frauds were unearthed in the War Department, 
Senator Grimes wrote to Senator Fessenden: 

" *We are going to destruction as fast as imbecility, corup- 
tion and the wheels of time can carry us.' Charges were 
made against the Secretary of War (then Senator Cameron) 
and he was relegated to Eussia. Whether he profited per- 
sonally by the stealings is unknown to me. Certainly Lin- 
coln did not think so, but of this I know and speak deliber- 
ately without malice or prejudice, that since 1861 the wheels 
of Pennsylvania's government have rolled backward, and the 
Camerons and Quays have been responsible therefor. 
Whether done by them in person or through Andrews and 
other well-paid servants, they are equally responsible. 

"How they have benefited personally is no secret to not a 
few who know the workings of the State Treasury, through 
the uncovering of the People's Bank methods and practices. 
It is hard to determine where io begin and harder still to 
know where to stop in the long, pitiful story of the State's 
disgrace and losses through the boss system now engrafted 
almost permanently upon our great State. 



SAMPLES OF QUAY'S PATRIOTISM. 

"Senator Quay's patriotism is of the kind that does not 
reach above self. Everything in Pennsylvania is subject to 
his political rule, and during the present crisis from first to 
last he has preyed like a vulture on the patriotism of the 
people and of his party for his own political and private ends. 
In this hour, when the young men of our State and land are 
marching for humanity and freedom it should be known 
over the length and breadth of this State that Senator Quay 



120 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

has not scrupled to play the traitor to patriotism. I charge, 
on what is the best testimony that can be obtainable, that 
Senator Quay was a member of a Senatorial combine to de- 
feat the wishes of President McKinley; that the meetings 
of this combine to assist the Democrats and Populists were 
for the most part held in Senator Quay's room in the Capitol; 
that all the time he was in league with this combination he 
was protesting to his friends and those whom he wished to 
deceive that he was not in sympathy with the movement and 
wanted it beaten, but that the sentiment of Pennsylvania 
demanded that he oppose the President. Moreover, as still 
further showing his deception and political trickery, he was 
at the same time, while making these protestations, sending 
telegrams to his ward heelers and political workers in Phila- 
delphia urging them to telegraph their Congressmen to sup- 
port him — Quay — in his warfare against the President. 

'^Can you conceive of a more shameful or perfidious piece 
of treachery to the people of this State and to the President 
of the United States in this hour of peril? But there is one 
other charge antedating this one which amounts almost to 
treason. I give the facts as they were publicly reported at 
the time of their occurrence. You all know with what speed 
and haste the government was compelled to purchase guns 
and hurry along plans for strengthening our navy and coast 
defenses. 

"I charge, and my authority is a leading and reputable 
newspaper, that Senator Quay was prepared to, and did do, 
all that lay in his power to delay the passage of the naval 
appropriation bill; holding back legislative action designed 
to strengthen this country against the assaults of foreign 
foes. And for what purpose? That he might revenge him- 
self on the Senate and the House of Representatives for their 
failure to pay the price demanded for armor plate by some 
of the great corporations of Pennsylvania, the head of one 
of which to-day is a resident, as he is also a native born, of 
a land beyond the seas; for the sake of a great corporation 
which it is alleged is a liberal wntributor to Senator Quay 
he was prepared to damage American interests for revenge. 



BOW QUAY FOUGHT McKlNLiJy. 121 

THE OPEN SALE OF POST OFFICES. 

"To what depth of political infamy has the Quay control 
of Pennsylvania reached when post offices are practically put 
up at a form of auction and knocked down to the political 
heeler who can pay the largest sum for the privilege of be- 
coming postmaster, and who at the same time is capable of 
carrying the most votes for Quay. It is a notorious fact that 
at least in two Congressional districts it is boldly asserted 
and easily proven that post offices are offered for sale and 
have been sold. And these offices are in districts whose mem- 
bers of Congress are Quay's warmest supporters, and they 
look to him to secure the offices for the men to whom they 
are sold. Listen to this: 

"'April 23, 1898. 

" 'Dear Sir: I have filed my application with the Post- 
master General for the post office at T , but it is said that 

our Congressman is holding it for $3,000. Now, I do not 
think it right to buy the office, and have not the money to do 
so, and write, asking for your aid in the matter. Can you 
give me any or suggest any course that will help me in se- 
curing it? If you can I will be greatly obliged. Yours, etc' 

"What do you think of this, my friends, for political in- 
famy? Of what value is your opinion, or your indorsemcBt, 
in the selection of a postmaster? The post offices of Penn- 
sylvania are sold like farm produce. 

"Emperors and despots read their doom in the advancement 
of intelligence the world over. No man was born to be a 
slave. The dynasties of Europe, that have endured for cen- 
turies, totter on their foundations, and the time is not distant 
when titled aristocracy will cease to usurp the rights of 
honest people. 

"Pennsylvania has been ruled for forty years by political 
despots, avaricious, cruel and corrupt. The chains of po- 
litical servitude have been welded tighter and tighter until 
every limb and muscle has felt the steeled imprisonment. 
Yet many political monarchs and monarchies, that for a time 
have flourished, have been overthrown when met by their 
deadliest foes — education and enlightenment — and the time 



1^2 SPEECBE8 OF SON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

is not far distant when no Quay nor Andrews will dare to 
lift a murderous hand to strike down the political liberties 
and material interests of the Eepublicans of Pennsylvania. 
The swords of corporations, misused public funds and po- 
litical patronage are not to forever menace Pennsylvania's 
greatness. 

"We will not be discouraged if we have many Bull Runs. 
There is sure to be an Appomattox. The militia of April 
will become the regulars of November. The deeper I get 
into the secrets, and the more I learn of the methods of this 
consolidated manhood-destroying and character-attacking 
political crowd in Pennsylvania, the more I appreciate why 
men hesitate to stand up straight and fight. It takes courage 
to face the Spanish bullet, but for some men it takes greater 
courage to face the reputation-destroying, character-smirch- 
ing, good-name-assassinating bullets of the machine batteries. 
To-day we see the machine doubling and redoubling its ef- 
forts and its money to turn back the rising tide of condem- 
nation, and when we see their citadels of strength being 
shaken we know that the day of emancipation is near at 
hand. 

"History has shown that political bosses have appeared 
strongest when they were nearest their end. Boss Tweed 
was thought to be unconquerable six months before his power 
was broken, and while he was in the very shadow of the peni- 
tentiary, and Boss John Y. McKane never lost an election 
while he had his liberty. He defied the warnings of an out- 
raged people and scoffed at threatened justice until a few 
days before he put on the prison stripes. 

"Do not think because the machine can, by its manipulated 
primaries, elect State delegates, that it is invulnerable. His- 
tory will repeat itself in Pennsylvania; the searchlight of 
truth turned on without fear or favor will be the destroying 
mine. I have discussed many important parts of the Quay 
machine, but much remains to be given. 

"I have shown that part No. 1 of the system is the State 
Treasury, the great central storehouse from which is dis- 
seminated wholesale corruption. I have spoken of part No. 
2 of the political system as the place-controlling and office- 



HOW QUAY FOUGHT McKINLEY. 1^3 

promising branch, which commands a premium for the place 
and compels official rottenness and slavery to satisfy the 
avarice and greed of the bosses. I have analyzed part No. 3 
of that political system as a great combination to suppress 
legitimate legislative news and distort actual facts relating 
to government. Part No. 4 is the combined influence of the 
great corporations always on the side of the bosses. Part No. 
5 is the both lavish and almost reckless use of vast sums of 
corruption money. Part No. 6 is the official legislation to 
protect favored politicians organized in speculations enabling 
them to commit crimes without fear of* punishment. 

THE MACHINE AS A CHARACTER WRECKER. 

'T!t is a fact, though a Pennsylvanian should blush to say 
it, that any person who may try to protect the honor and 
guard the interests of his State by opposing the Quay ma- 
chine, takes his business interests, his reputation and almost 
his life in his own hands. No sooner does a man show in- 
dependence and refuse to indorse the misdeeds of the po- 
litical machine than he is taken in hand to be disciplined. 
If he is the employee of a corporation he is threatened with 
discharge; if he is a merchant, he is boycotted; if he is a clerk, 
the head of the firm is notified that he must be suppressed; 
if he is interested in a corporation, the company^s interests 
are threatened; if he is a director or stockholder in a bank, 
large customers are found to threaten the withdrawal of their 
business; if he is a physician, good patrons object; if he is a 
lawyer, his clients are given orders and threaten to leave 
him; if he is a preacher, members of his congregation pro- 
test; if a man daring to be independent of political dictation 
is in debt, he is threatened by those who hold his obligations. 
This is not the result of accident, but of method. 

'T^t is the result of a carefully planned and manipulated 
system that extends into every county in the State, and 
reaches all classes of business. It is every day and every 
year working machinery, manned by a host of political re- 
tainers, who report to the central office the first symptoms 
of machine insubordination, and who are expected to advise 
ways and means of applying the silencing and crushing pres- 



124 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

Bure. But there is a class of men beyond the these influences 
that the machine must reach. They are men who have to 
their credit long years of honorable professional and busi- 
ness records; men who are leaders in their respective com- 
munities; men whose very names are synonymous for in- 
tegrity and character; men whom ordinary consideration will 
not move. These men are a constant menace to the existence 
of the machine, and methods must be found to keep them 
from taking an active interest in politics. 

"To influence these men is set in motion the character tor- 
pedo, the reputation smirching and the good-name destroy- 
ing machine. It is worked by the hands of a gang of place- 
holders and place-seekers who risk nothing by trying to rob 
honest men of characters. It is a warning of what all who 
protest must encounter. The blackmailer begins to operate. 
That most contemptible of human beings — the anonymous 
letter writer — sta,rts his miserable work. The scandal 
peddler, a moral outcast, labors systematically to poison so- 
ciety with inuendo, insinuation and base lies. Detective 
agencies, composed of low tools and thugs, are hired at great 
expense to dog the footsteps of those who dare work against 
the machine. They are paid to fabricate stories, invent false 
accusations, and furnish false evidence against anyone whom 
the machine may wish to destroy. Any man who causes 
trouble is sure to feel their vengeance. Those connected in 
any way with the persons of their special hatred are not safe. 
The youth or the aged are not spared. They do not care 
for the gray haired mother or innocent children, and this 
is why men dare not fight. Any man who enters the arena 
of Pennsylvania politics to-day against the machine will not 
escape it. Thus do they arrogate to themselves the sole right 
to your offices and assault you if you venture toward your 
own door. 

"It is one of the most powerful adjuncts to the great Re- 
publican political machine in Pennsylvania to-day. Men of 
Chester axe you satisfied? Are you willing to surrender with- 
out a struggle your right to have ambitions? Are you willing 
to give consent that your sons shall be debarred from public 
office or public life unless they sacrifice their integrity and 



FACTS FOR BUSINESS MEN. 125 

their honor upon the altar of political slavery and corrup- 
tion? Is it not time that you join with us in driving away 
these flocks of machine-paid vultures, who peck and caw 
at the reputations of honest men to try and make the world 
believe that they have found food filthy enough for their de- 
praved palates." 



FACTS FOR BUSINESS MEN. 



Enormous Increase of Expenses. Over $1,000,000 

added to the running Expenses of the State in 

1895, '96 ^^^ '97 — Figures that are a matter 

of record — While Business was at 

its worst the Expenses were 

the highest — Some Facts 

for Business Men. 



^Tacts for Business Men" might have served for Mr. 
Wanamaker's text at a mighty outpouring of the people of 
York on May 2d. It was an appeal to the common business 
sense of the people. This is what he said: 

"I will not speak to you to-night of the inequalities of tax- 
ation that you are forced to endure, but will have something 
to say later on the subject of the laws that have been en- 
acted under the guidance of the Quay machine to relieve 
corporations from paying their just share and placing the 
burden upon the people. , I will therefore pass for to-night 
the questions of tax assessments and collections and take up 
what to me as a business man is far more important — the 
matter of State expenditures. State expenditures can be 
divided into two classes, viz., actual and honest. Actual 
expenditures may include excessive and illegal bills, dis- 
honest charges, useless outlays, 9,ctually paid, however, under 
authority of law. 

"Honest expenditures represent the prompt payment of 
necessary bills at 100 cents on the dollar, and no more. It 
is the actual but not the honest expenses of running our 
State government that have depleted the State Treasury, in- 



126 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

creased taxes, deprived hospitals and worthy charities of 
needed assistance and brought us face to face with rapidly 
increasing debt. 

"Following the advent of the last Cleveland administration 
the pulse of business began to slacken, the wheels of Penn- 
sylvania's industries slowed up, the volume of trade lessened 
until a business and industrial panic was upon us. Retrench- 
ment and curtailment of expenses were necessary in every 
branch of business. Capital and labor met upon middle 
grounds and agreed upon reduced prices and wages in order 
that the fires in many a mill and factory could be kept alive. 
It was not so much a question of earning as it was a matter 
of saving. Self-denial and most rigid economy floated many 
a great business concern in Pennsylvania safely over the 
shoals of Democratic business depression and industrial par- 
alysis. Eailroads were obliged to reduce expenses, mer- 
chants to lessen the force of employes and manufacturers to 
cut wages. 

"The State's income based upon the volume of business 
and the value of property, fell off rapidly. The demands of 
charity increased, thousands of unemployed became de- 
pendent upon the State for their daily bread, hospitals were 
taxed beyond their healthful capacity, and almshouses were 
filled to overflowing. It was a time when forced economy in 
the administration of the Commonwealth's affairs and the 
expenditures of the State's money would be httle less than 
true patriotism. Senator Quay and his lieutenants, who con- 
trolled the State government machinery, and who could in- 
crease or lessen expenses, knew full well of the crying needs 
of charity; they knew that the unfortunate were suffering 
and great numbers of insane were lying on floors and in stone 
corridors of the hospitals throughout the State. They knew 
that every dollar of increased expenses meant more burden 
upon the half -paid wage-earner and the unemployed; they 
knew that every dollar of increased expenses must take just 
that much from the dire needs of the victims of accident and 
disease. 

SOME STARTLING FIGURES. 

"It was a question between charity and political enrich- 



FACTS FOR BUS1:NJ!JS8 MEN. 127 

nient;- between food and shelter for the hungry and home- 
less, and new berths and fat salaries for political henchmen, 
and politics won. It was only one of the great victories that 
have demonstrated Senator Quay's mastery over this Com- 
monwealth. But the figures speak for themselves. The cost 
of running the executive, legislative and judiciary depart- 
ments of the State for the six years from 1889 to 1894 in- 
clusive was, during these years of business prosperity, as fol- 
lows: 

1889-1890 $2,240,027 70 

1891-1892 2,323,610 70 

1893-1894 2,282,218 16 



$6,845,856 56 



"An average cost of $2,281,952.18 each two years. 

"The cost of running the executive, legislative and judicial 
departments of the State for the four years from 1895 to 
1898 inclusive, under the most severe business depression, 
was as follows: 

1895-1896 . $3,306,287 54 

1897-1898 3,210,803 23 



$6,517,090 77 



"An average cost of $3,258,545.38 each two years, showing 
an average increase of expenditures each two years during the 
hard times of $976,593.20, or about 43 per cent. To this 
enormous increase should be added $86,500 of items vetoed 
by the Governor in the general appropriation bill, another 
of ^67,500 that was cut from legislative investigating com- 
mitttees, through the efforts of the anti-Quay men in the 
House, and vetoes of the Governor, and the $65,908.96 
Lexow bill that was defeated by the "Seventy-six." 

"Taxpayers, how much longer will you permit yourselves to 
be robbed? Even if you enjoy political slavery, dare you 
allow the State to be conducted longer by such business 



128 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

methods? You are wondering why I, a Republican, dare 
make use of such figures. They say I am furnishing ammu- 
nition for the Democratic party. They were never more mis- 
taken in their lives. This is not ammunition furnished by 
Wanamaker, but ammunition manufactured and furnished by 
Quay and his followers. It has all been made, it is a matter of 
record, it cannot be destroyed. You must either say it is right 
or repudiate those who are responsible for it. You are now 
being asked to take for four years the same set of officers 
who are schooled in every branch of the business. If you 
want more of such ammunition you will get it by electing 
the Quay- Andrews slated candidates. 

"I speak to you as one man may speak to another man, not 
making to you an ordinary political speech, but making 
simply a patriotic statement. I have no set speeches, as you 
see, but the words I speak come fresh from an inborn pur- 
pose to be helpful in these days to relieve Pennsylvania from 
the deep degradation to which she has fallen in the adminis- 
tration of public affairs. State and National. 

"The stand I take is on the old principles with which the 
Eepublican party was founded, and I take my stand against 
the practices by which the Republican party is being foun- 
dered. I do not ask you to take my ladder tc step up to 
your politics. Let the speaker be forgotten in this hour, and 
permit the personality of all men as individuals to pass out 
of sight, while we look to-night at the exact facts that form 
the administration of our State government. Guesswork, 
prejudices and partisanship have no place in completing the 
inventory. We owe it to ourselves and our country to make 
it right. 

"Even party loyalty must be served by uncovering the lid 
of a seemingly bottomless pit of barter and sale of National 
and State patronage and legislative functions. York county 
deserves to be forever Democratic if we make no effort to 
show the Republican party worthy of confidence. Past plat- 
forms have been as hollow as a drum, and equally noisy. 

"The great white Republican party in Pennsylvania is to- 
day as empty as the great white twisted, once great, but now 
useless 'Maine' cruiser in the Cuban waters. 



FACTS FOR BUSINESS MEN. 129 

"Let us look at the wreck. Shift over it the calcium white 
light of truth. The officials who are on board of this Penn- 
sylvania of ours come to us through padded conventions, 
made up in part from the padded pay rolls of officeholders. 
You and I and the taxpayers and the State Treasury are 
coerced and controlled by the salary paid servants of the 
State. Your own money sometimes, not once earned but 
twice paid, goes into their hands to buy their time to set 
up primaries and committees and conventions to do exactly 
opposite to what you want done and what the people some- 
times take pains to declare to be their will. Long since we 
have found we cannot shame a crowd, neither can we prose- 
cute it. 

"Sydney Smith once said that a committee had neither a 
soul to be saved nor a body to be kicked. Two United States 
Senators and a "score or more of Congressmen with a State 
administration in and around the State House at Harris- 
burg of their choosing; of the bosses and the Legislature 
the whole of Pennsylvania's population and makes our fair 
State the object of ridicule the wide world over among all men 
except politicians who spell Pennsylvania with three P's. It 
is — Pennsylvania, Politicians, Paradise. 

THE POLITICAL SPECULATORS. 

"Whatever business is bad in Pennsylvania one business is 
OMTied by the bosses, constitute a giant that utterly defies 
good. It is speculation. Politicians make an open door to 
the Treasury vaults by constructing a State bank, and 
through this political portico passes an endless procession 
from the first to the last of the year, helping themselves in 
various ways by loans often unsecured, by joint account 
speculations, by sons, cousins, committee clerks, combinations, 
by overdrafts, by notes unpaid held over and forty other ways, 
speculating in stocks and land, buying into corporations, 
forming guarantors' companies, pledging offices as collateral, 
and on goes the traffic in honor and place and power and 
sugar, while the unemployed whose taxes are shoveled out, 
stand idly by — dazed and cowed by the very audacity of it 
all. 



130 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAEER. 

"And there is another crowd looking on. That's the 
cashier. What's that he is saying over the telephone? Watch 
him as he goes out that last day and up the steps at home 
into the bureau drawer for a pistol to sit down for the last 
moment alive in his own home. Look at him kindly and 
look away at whoever holds the hand in the lion's mouth. 
Stop yet a little longer. Who are all these in that crowd. 
The little children are farmers' sons and daughters, wage 
workers' little ones, who are without school books. The 
older people in the crowd are the teachers, begging for long 
unpaid salaries withheld by the speculating politicians, whose 
fingers grip the check books of the State Treasurer, who 
could not draw the money out if he would and disburse it 
aright. 

"But the rest of the crowd? Oh, they, according to the 
politician's creed, are not worth noticing. They are the poor- 
house crowd, the paupers, the lame, blind and palsied, the 
army of demented from all over the State — wild-eyed, sick, 
suffering, waiting for some man of Galilee to come along and 
heal them, for man has rejected them and crucified them. 
Throw back the light and let it shine upon last winter's 
legislative sessions at Harrisburg. 

"See that United States Senator a day and a night franti- 
cally on deck in the Speaker's room working for the passage 
of the Guarantors' crash-saver protection bill. Look at that 
Lexow lunge at the poor, old, sick Pennsylvania Treasury. 
Look at the army of the brewers massed against the schools 
to help the Senators to keep their pledges to them for their 
payment of campaign expenses. Tramp, tramp, the boys are 
marching! Senators, House of Representatives, committee 
clerks, ofiice holders of every rank crying ^Give, give!' 

"Put down pure butter and put up oleo. Never mind the 
miners. Pay our committee that did not investigate and that 
did travel on mileage and passes — pay us $11,000, of if that 
is too great a robbery we will take $7,000 or $4,000, one com- 
mittee after another says. Pay us so that we can double our 
legal salaries." 



THE LAND LIEN TAX BILL, \^\ 

THE LAND LIEN TAX BILL. 



How the Machine Bosses forced it through the Legis- 
lature — Used to defeat some men and to elect 
others — Revenue Bills that were 
aimed at the Widows and 
Orphans. 



After a day spent on Gettysburg battle-field' Mr. Wana- 
maker spoke to an immense audience in Hanover, on the 
night of May 3d. Inspired by his trip to Gettysburg his in- 
troductory remarks were strikingly eloquent. Deahng with 
State issues, however, he said: 

"I feel as if I had been in the greater Westminster Abbey 
to-day. To spend a day on the Gettysburg battle-field is to 
waken every patriotic impulse of the human heart. My soul 
seems in a dream of the days of conflict and victory. The 
procession of our crowned heroes passes before me. Fore- 
most, Abraham Lincoln, looming up grand and luminous. 
''Time and again to-day I stood alone and heard him speak 
the words that, like a picture with eyes that look straight at 
you wherever you stand, follow and fit the American people 
to-day in the circumstances of our new war. Said Mr. Lin- 
coln: 'My hope of success in this great and terrible struggle 
rests on the immutable foundation, the justness and good- 
ness of God.^ And when events are very threatening and 
prospects very dark I still hope in some way which man 
cannot see all will be well in the end because our cause is 
just and God is on our side. 

"The great principles for which our fathers and brothers 
fought and went to sleep in martyrs' graves have been lost 
in the fog of plunder-seekers. True Eepublicanism is lifeless 
and dead and trampled to death by unholy feet that caress 
dishonor to themselves, the State and the old and once great 
party, all unconscious while they filch to fill their own 
greedy appetites of gain. 

"Our visit to you to-day is to call out the reserves because 
of imminent peril upon us — not from Spain, but from our 
own lethargy and mechanical don't-careism. It causes us to 



132 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

be participators in the piratical plots to ravage our land. To 
be idle and indifferent when the Johnstown flood is sweeping 
down the hills npon us is to become criminally responsible 
for the devastation. Since before the civil war Pennsylvania 
has not gone one step forward socially. From the date of 
disbanding armies, which marks the decided entree of en- 
riched corporators and corporations into politics in our State, 
Pennsylvania good and upright government has surely gone 
backward. «• 

"Whatever the blessings of the war, the train of evils is let 
loose in a new order of suddenly enriched men. And the 
dulled conscience incident to strife and carnage set the key 
of life to a lower pitch. If the leaders of Pennsylvania poli- 
tics had started out from the day of the elder Cameron with 
the intention of pulling Pennsylvania in the background, its 
official life down to the lowest level and its legislative pro- 
cedure to the worst form ever known in America, they could 
not have succeeded better than they have done. 

TAX-PAYERS PAY THE BILLS. 

"We laugh to scorn the stories of witches and withcraft, 
but those days have surely come back to Pennsylvania. I 
do not believe that with all the shrewdness of the far-seeing 
Philistines that have come in upon us, that any or either of 
them ever saw to what length their miscalculations would 
carry them and us, and all must in some way or other, di- 
rectly or by deceit, pay the costs of mismanaged State gov- 
ernment election expenses that never come out of the poli- 
ticians' pockets. 

"If armor-plate and ships and contracts and railroad and 
other corporations pay up to campaign foragers out of their 
profits they must recover from the people on higher bids for 
all they supply. If the State has to pay more in their bills 
paid from the Treasury, there is less left for the schools and 
charities and good roads and improvements throughout the 
Commonwealth. Always must the taxpayers foot the bills 
in the last analysis. If the sensible people of this State would 
stop for one single hour and see the facts of the deception 
practiced upon them by the boss leaders operating the Quay- 



THE LAND LIEN TAX BILL. I33 

Andrews machine, facts that are unalterable by assault or 
side issues, facts that are completely supported by the records, 
they would organize a rebellion that would send the scoun- 
drels from the office quicker than they sent Lee from Gettys- 
burg. 

"Last night at the close of the York meeting a gentleman 
took my hand and said: ^I was a member of the Legisla- 
ture and know all about what you told; you have not told 
half of it, and it is all so bad that the people are so lost in 
astonishment that they wil never believe the half/ 

THE BOLD QUAY MACHINE. 

"The boldness with which the Quay machine commits all 
manner of unlawful and tax-increasing acts against the peo- 
ple of Pennsylvania is only surpassed by the impudent as- 
sumption that the rank and file of the Eepublican party are 
so stupid and besotted that they can be made to believe any- 
thing. They insult the people's intelligence by the use of 
the most apparent duplicity and deception as campaign wea- 
pons, and think the people too dumb to discover it. 

"A brazen attempt of this kind was brought to my notice 
in Chester county last week. The machine there is attempt- 
ing to defeat certain men for the Legislature who stood with 
the ^Seventy-six^ during the last session in opposition to all 
the vicious Quay legislation. The legislative records made by 
these men will be searched in vain for a good excuse why 
every voter in Chester county who is free and unmachine- 
owned, and who believes that the people and not the politi- 
cians alone should have something to say about the man- 
agement of State affairs, should not give them hearty sup- 
port. They are unable to give one honest excuse for opposing 
those who stood unfalteringly for the State and party's wel- 
fare. But they seek to raise a dishonest issue growing out 
of a measure that was drafted by a Quay man, introduced 
by a Quay member, reported favorably by a Quay Legislature 
bill was passed without discussion under the assurance and 
belief that it was loeal in application and affected only the 
under a treacherous mask prepared by a Quay man. The 
district represented by its authors. I refer to the bill known 



134 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

as the land lien tax bill. Thirty-four years ago this law was 
enacted by the State Legislature which allowed liens to be 
entered against unpatented lands for purchase money, in- 
terest and fees due the Commonwealth. 

THE LAND LIEN TAX BILL. 

"The injustice of the measure prevented its enforcement 
for more than one-third of a century, and it was a dead letter 
until restored to life by the last Quay Legislature. Lands 
have been sold and resold, and the question of this land lien 
tax was never raised. Supposedly good titles were given with 
no knowledge on the part of anyone that such laws ever ex- 
isted. So firm was the belief among those possessing knowl- 
edge of it that the law would never become operative that 
no one thought it necessary to go to the trouble of having 
it repealed. Only the peculiar conditions that surrounded 
the Legislature of '97 could ever have been responsible for 
the revival of such a long forgotten and unmeritorious law. 
The last Legislature had but two objects, viz., to create new 
places for machine politicians and to protect corporations 
and brewers from paying their just share of the revenue 
necessary to run the State. 

^Ti]very conceivable proposition to protect the rich and 
strong and place the burden upon the poor and weak was 
considered. First the ukase of Czar Quay made it certain 
that corporations and brewers must not be touched. 

^'It was a peculiar condition thart confronted men who 
wished to do only what was right. They realized that beer, 
the most legitimate subject of taxation, could not be taxed, 
and that corporations would be protected at all hazards. 
The demands of charity were so urgent that money must be 
provided to alleviate actual want and suffering. It was not 
a question of doing what they thought was right, but of 
doing what they believed to be best, and some of the very 
best and truest men in the last Legislature were forced to 
vote for unjust revenue measures, believing that the needs 
of charity should have preference over all things. 
BREWERS WERE FAVORED. 

"All revenue legislation must originate in the ways and 
means committee of the House. This committee was ap- 



THE LAND LIEN TAX BILL. I35 

pointed with special care that is should be controlled by long 
distance ^phone from Washington. It was impossible to 
originate any revenue bill that did not have the approval of 
the machine, and the anti-Quay men had no alternative but 
to choose from among the machine-produced revenue bills, 
not one of which was fair. 

"To show how determined the machine men were that 
the brewers should not be taxed they attempted to take 
$1,000,000 from the public schools to pay the brewers' share. 
They were willing to tax oleomargarine, though they well 
knew that such a tax meant the total destruction of the pure 
butter interests of the State. They assaulted the great com- 
mercial (not corporations) interests of Pennsylvania by the 
imposition of a mercantile tax that would have forced many 
large enterprises to leave the State. They did not hesitate 
to divide dead men's estates and wring from the widow and 
orphan a part of all that stands between them and actual 
want. Bicycles were to be taxed and the wagon of the farmer 
was to be made to help pay the brewers' portion. 

"The farmer, whose business compels him to act more in- 
dividually than any other set of men, and who is less likely 
to organize for determined opposition than other classes, 
seems to have been the special target for the politicians' dis- 
criminating arrows. It was when hard pressed to find some- 
thing to tax, and to have that something belong to those who 
could the least effectually resent it, that they devised the land 
lien tax bill, and then tried to compel the farmer, who by dint 
of economy and toil had saved enough to buy a little farm, 
to pay thousands of dollars that he is in no wise morally 
liable for, but which are the just dues of corporations and 
brewers. 

RAILROADED BY POLITICIANS. 

"The land lien tax bill was railroaded through without 
being explained or understood, except by the httle coterie 
of politicians who were back of it. The champions of the 
measure were careful that there should be no discussion on 
the bill, but they quietly sent their agents about the House 
saying it was only a local measure that would affect but Erie 



136 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

county, the district represented by its author. But the bill 
had a two-fold purpose, as did nearly all the revenue meas- 
ures conceived by the machine. The one chief characteristic 
of all revenue legislation considered by the last Legislature 
was that after revenue was provided from any source a pro- 
vision was always made to distribute a large portion of it 
among the politicians. 

"The mercantile tax bill, for instance, created seventy-six 
high-salaried collectorships for Quay men with unlimited 
latitude for expenditures. So with the machine land lien 
tax bill. After unjustly wringing large sums from the farmer 
the bill provided that the politicians could first help them- 
selves to any portion of it that the machine might want, as 
is shown by the sixth section of the bill, which is as follows: 
*That from the moneys so collected there shall be deducted 
such amounts for actual expenses incurred, and services ren- 
dered in the enforcement of the act, as may be approved by 
the Auditor General, State Treasurer and Secretary of In- 
terior Affairs.^ It would be very easy, under the same ques- 
tionable construction of this clause of the bill that the Au- 
ditor General and State Treasurer give to indemnity bonds 
and padded pay rolls, to appropriate every dollar of the 
money raised from this source for the use of political hench- 
men before it reaches the State Treasury. But the amazing 
thing to me is the audacity of these men, who unblushingly 
make the only issue against honest men their vote for a bill 
that they were tricked by Quay agents into supporting, and 
a bill so drawn as to furnish places and ammunition for the 
machine. 

"It was a carefully planned attack upon an unfeared class 
to produce revenue and places for the machine, and at the 
same time to protect the favored interests. The storm of 
opposition that has met the attempted collection of these 
taxes has temporarily halted their enforced collection. It 
may be these claims will not be pressed again until a ma- 
chine-made Governor and a machine-owned Legislature is 
elected, when there will no longer be any necessity for the 
machine heeding the protests of the people. But I wish to 
state to the farmers of York county, and I wish to state it 



RAILROAD PASSES AND POLITICIANS. 13 7 

in most unequivocal terms, that if an anti-Quay Legislature 
and an unmachine-owned Governor is elected the land lien 
tax law will be repealed — and more, it will be repealed in 
such a manner that no set of scheming politicians in the 
future can ever revive it to place a burden upon your children. 
Think of the Quay machine trying to cajole the farmer into 
helping elect another Quay Legislature. In Lancaster county 
it was a clearly-defined issue, the four men who voted for 
the bill were elected by the Quay people, while the only anti- 
Quay man from the county who voted against it they de- 
feated. Thus they originate a vicious bill, they pass it under 
cover, they elect Quay men upon the issue in one county, and 
try to defeat on the same issue anti-Quay men who were de- 
ceived into voting for it, in another county. 

"In the light of their past history this is not strange, but 
to attempt to dupe and impose upon the intelligence of the 
farmers whom they have wronged is an affront and an insult 
to their intelligence. They drive men through the flames 
and then taunt them for their sufferings. They rob people 
of their money and ask those same people for license to rob 
them again." 



RAILROAD PASSES AND POLITICIANS. 



How the great Corporations of Pennsylvania control 

the Votes of the Legislators — Free Passes handed 

out by the hundreds — Express, Telegraph and 

Telephone Lines give their services free 

to Politicians and Office Holders — An 

Exposure of a Great Evil that is 

destroying men. 



The immense power of corporation influence and the free 
railroad pass evil were exposed in the most complete and 
startling manner by Mr. Wanamaker at Huntingdon on the 
night of May 3d. The speech produced a profound sensa- 
tion among the hundreds present. He said: 

"We have come to a crisis in our history. "We are blockaded 
by a tribe of officeholders who persist in claiming more than 



138 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WAN AM ARE R. 

their own. They usurp our offices, hurn the tax-payers' mo- 
ney in warming themselves and their cohorts, ravage the 
Treasury fields to find forage to subsist the invading forces, 
shoot down without mercy everything that stands in their 
way and tramp upon the rights of unprotected women, from 
whom they wrest unjust taxes, and little children from whom 
they sneak an education. 

'^Courts of law with Judges, some of whom can only have 
their places by the grace of the Quay- Andrews cabal, hold 
court to try burglars and bullies, but not a finger is laid on 
those who commit misdemeanor in legislative and administra- 
tive office. The starving man who picks a lock is severely 
punished. The shck aristocrat of politics picks the lock of the 
Treasury through appropriation bills and contracts and num- 
berless methods, using taxpayers' money deposited where he 
orders and held subject to his order, and the solemn courts 
of Pennsylvania sleep with their eyes open. 

"Most honorable men of highest repute are upon the bench 
in Pennsylvania, and I can only emphasize the mystery of 
twenty years and more of the practice of law in Pennsylvania 
that punishes a common thief and winks at an uncommon 
one in a law-maker, whether he is the dictator in or out of a 
corporation. 

"Time runs away so fast that I must content myself to- 
night by discussing one phase only of the sore side of our sick 
and fast dying subject, the Eepublican party, unless the 
people, who have the leaves of healing, will hasten to the 
rescue. 

"Laws are formed upon principles of justice. Empires fall 
and crumble when the people become educated to hold the 
law in contempt. When law becomes a sealed book that can 
only be unclasped by the imperial will of one man the friends 
of popular government may well become alarmed. When 
law becomes so dear that it must be bought by sacrifice of 
integrity and manhood, and when its double blades are craft 
and oppression, the very foundation of free government is 
undermined. A fundamental maxim of a free State is that 
laws shall be made by one set of men and administered by 
another. !. -^J,|=^, 



RAILROAD PA88ES AND POLITICIANS. 139 

PENNSYLVANIA LAWS MADE BY ONE MAN. 

*^In Pennsylvania the laws are made by one man and largely 
administered by the will of the same individual. Long con- 
tinued abuse of official office and power in the State has dulled 
the moral sense of the people. The very classes whose inter- 
ests are most affected have become so thoroughly chloroform- 
ed by the continued prostitution of the law-making and ad- 
ministering branches of the State government that they view 
with stolid indifference the most open and flagrant violation 
of the laws that are intended for their protection. I have 
detailed in former speeches the legislation that has been pass- 
ed by the machine to permit henchmen to commit wholesale 
acts of fraud upon the people without fear of prosecution. 
I have shown how impossible it is with all branches of the 
State machinery in possession of the politicians to punish 
officials who have publicly acknowledged to having conspired 
to unlawfully take the money from the State Treasury to pay 
political debts, because every witness in»the case was a con- 
spirator, and the law will not compel a man to incriminate 
himself. 

"I will speak to-night about a law belonging to another 
class, which is openly violated for the benefit of the political 
machine, without the slightest attempt at secrecy. It is the 
law against wholesale distribution of free passes to public offi- 
cials who are called upon to determine the most vital questions 
of legislation, where the interests of these pass-granting cor- 
porations are directly pitted against the constituencies these 
officials are supposed to represent. Article 17, section 8, of 
the Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania reads as fol- 
lows: 'No railroad, railway or other transportation company 
shall grant free passes to any person, except officers or em- 
ployees of the companies.' The inter-State commerce law, 
enacted February 4, 1889, prohibits carriers of passengers or 
freight giving free transportation to particular persons. As 
the name implies, it is a law especially intended to prevent 
the bestowal of special favors to any one beyond the borders 
of the State, 



140 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAEER. 

"Thus we have the State Constitution forbidding it, we 
have the inter-State commerce law prohibiting it, we have Su- 
preme Court decisions against it, and in face of all this trans- 
portation companies are giving out thousands and tens of 
thousands of free passes every year, as one form of the con- 
tribution they make to the machine in return for favorable 
legislation. It is no secret that free passes can be obtained 
by officials with a political pull. It is by no means the great 
steam railroads, which support lobbies at the State Capitol, 
seeking valuable franchises and new concessions, that alone 
issue passes and. extend favors forbidden by law, but street 
railroads and parlor car companies and telegraph and tele- 
phone companies, and freight and express companies that is- 
sue books of free franks to politicians. 

EVERYTHING IS FREE TO THE POLITICIANS. 

"You know that public officials are not asked to pay street 
car fares even in remote cities. You know that public offi- 
cials send countless telegrams without charge. You know 
that public officials ride free in palace cars. You know that 
public officials are given the freedom of great telephone ser- 
vices. You know that public officials send freight and ex- 
press by the great transportation companies free of charge. 
And why is this? Is it because they have held steadfast to 
their ante-election promises they made you to protect your 
interests against the ever increasing greed of these very cor- 
porations? Is it because they have refused to vote away your 
valuable franchises without ample compensation to you? Is 
it because they have tried to make these great and powerful 
combinations of wealth pay their full share of taxes. No, you 
need not answer. But let your tax receipts, which show con- 
stantly increasing assessments, do that for you. 

"Do you know that railroad passes have intrinsic values and 
are the equivalent of money? Do you not know that Hunt- 
ingdon county has been and will be in this present campaign 
flooded with passes? Certainly you can get them, if that is 
the price of your vote. Do you labor for the machine and 
feJiut your eyes while political freebooters rob you and appro- 



RAILROAD PA8SES AND POLITICIANS. 141 

priate your earnings to themselves, and not get yonr share of 
the passes? If you do, you are far more generous to your 
neighbors than I take you to be. 

"Woe to the man who attempts to array class against class. 
Shame on those who seek personal advancement by sowing 
the seeds of discontent in the minds of the masses. It is only 
as a simple business proposition that I take up this subject 
to-night. 

"The time is far passed when the interests of the people and 
those of the corporations were identical. Human selfishness, 
the origin of inequalities and the source of dangerous power, 
has gradually divorced and made the interests of the masses 
diametrically different from those of the corporations. 

"The great combination of capital, realizing the power of 
organization, discipline and concerted energy, have mustered 
in and equipped great armies of talent and genius, such as 
money can always command. On the principle that might 
makes right, and that they are entitled to all privileges that 
can be obtained through legislation, by fair means or foul, 
they have waged an unceasing war against the people. A 
long-continued series of victories has made them thirsty for 
more. Continued success in their schemes has intoxicated 
them, and they are arrogant and defiant. Conscious of their 
strength they proclaim by word and deed their mastery over 
the people. 

"The masses, a great unorganized and undisciplined force, 
cannot maintain such an unequal war. Notably in the oil 
regions of our State they have been forced from one retreat 
to another, their lands have been taken from them and their 
homes covered with mortgages, for the benefit of corpora- 
tions. Against the standing army of well-paid and splendid- 
ly-drilled corporation legislators, the people send out an army 
of undisciplined militia every two years. The people gather 
their recruits from all the walks of life; honest men, but with 
no experience with the corporation legislative bunco-steerers, 
and, totally ignorant that corporation confidence men are 
hired to swarm legislative bodies and to break down the good 
resolutions of good men, they fall easy prey to these agents. 



142 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAEER. 

"These officials who enlist for the people's cause come from 
the ranks. They have personally felt the heavy weight of 
unjust discrimination. They enter public life fully deter- 
mined to help break the iron band that is being drawn tighter 
and tighter around the brow of their people. But the con- 
fidence man is there; he courts the acquaintance of the new 
member and gains his confidence; he tells how easy it is to 
obtain free passes. The new member is anxious to demon- 
strate to his constituents his great pull. He gives his friends 
passes by the score, not realizing that every pass he accepts 
is carrying him farther and farther from any probability of 
serving his constituents. If you offered these men money 
for the votes for corporation favors they would strike you in 
the face. Yet by the insidious influence of free passes, han- 
dled by the skillful lobbyist, their votes are mortgaged and 
sold to the corporation before they realize it. You elect men 
to fight back the merciless corporate hosts and they are im- 
mediately put on the free-pass roll of these very companies. 
In some States an official found riding on free passes is driven 
from office in disgrace. In Pennsylvania an official who dis- 
plays pocketfuls of them is esteemed and re-elected. 

"There are laws upon the statute books against this form 
of wholesale bribery. You not only fail to enforce the law 
against the practice, but you applaud your elected servants 
when you know they have become the paid agents of corpo- 
rations. And as the interest on your mortgage gets harder 
and harder to pay you do not realize it is your own fault, but 
you complain of the tariff and finance. 

IT IS TREASON TO THE TAXPAYERS. 

"Suppose our army officers whom we will send to Cuba to 
protect our interests should become the constant guests of 
the Blancos and the Weylers. Suppose that certain of our 
officers were the constant recipients of special favors from 
the Spanish government. Suppose it was acknowledged that 
they were receiving costly gifts and favors from the Spanish 
generals. How long would it be before they would be called 
upon to answer the charge of treason? Yet you select officials 
to fight for your rights against corporate invasions and you 



RAILROAD PAS8E8 AND POLITICIANS. 143 

£ee those officials placed under the pay of corporations and 
say not a word. 

"Your silence and indifference is a most alarming sign to 
the friends of popular government. It shows only too well 
how the moral sense of the people has become blunted by the 
vicious system of politics. The great railroad companies send 
their lobbyists to Harrisburg, where they remain throughout 
every session of the Legislature. They sit in the presence of 
the legislators and deal out free passes, while legislation they 
are interested in is under consideration. 

"Machine politicians are provided with pads of blank passes 
to fill out at will. The worse the corporation measure to be 
passed, or the machine scheme to be furthered, the more plen- 
tiful become passes, and the larger is the package of envelopes 
containing passes that the lobbyist appears with each morn- 
ing. A practical politician tells me that more good men can 
be bought for $100 worth of passes than with $1,000 cash. 
The machine distributes passes with a prodigal hand. Thou- 
sands and tens of thousands are granted for the use of the 
machine every year. So plentiful have they become, these 
free passes, that men traffic in them, traveling men buy them 
at a discount. 

"A political meeting was held in Philadelphia some time 
ago and men actually went from town to town in neighbor- 
ing counties distributing railroad tickets free to those who 
would agree to attend the meeting. The inter-State laws are 
ignored, and passes are freely given to officials over roads ex- 
tending into two States. Taxpayers, is it not time to call a 
halt to a system that threatens ruin to the party? It is not 
simply a scar upon the surface, but a canker eating into the 
very heart. 

"The Republican craft is being swept on faster and faster in 
the current of debauchery; the rapids are below her. Strong 
muscles and stout hearts can only save her. Will you take two 
steps forward and swear that the party of Lincoln and Grant 
shall not perish, or will you allow her to sweep on to certain de- 
struction? The free pass privilege is worth hundreds of thou- 



144 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

sands of dollars every year to the machine, and every pass 
granted is paid for by the taxpayers ten times over. 

"This is part number eight of the great manhood-destroy- 
ing, corporation-strengthening, corruption-producing, bank- 
wrecking, character- assasinating, treasury-looting and crime- 
fostering political system that controls Pennsylvania. 

"I would like to say a few words about my attitude toward 
corporations, but will not tax your patience to do so to-night. 
Corporations are the great agents of civilization and pro- 
gress; they are entitled to rights and great privileges, and 
I want them to enjoy such, but there is a limit. In my speech 
at Eeading to-morrow night I will say something on the 
subject of corporations/' 



QUAY— A SHAM REFORMER. 

How the head of the Bosses' Machine fooled and 
cheated the People in the way of promised 
Reforms — His shameful scheme as 
exposed in a Private Contract, w^here- 
by he was to become absolute 
Czar of the Keystone State. 
Mr. W^anamaker as a 
friend of Corpora- 
tions. 



In a Quay stronghold — Eeading — on the evening of May 
6th, before an enthusiastic audience of 1,500 people, Mr. 
Wanamaker tore the mask of sham reform from the face of 
M. S. Quay. Some of the bosses' shameful schemes were ex- 
posed in detail. The speech in full follows: 

"Over the Cuban waters rings the watchword ^Remember 
the Maine,' and over the Pennsylvania domain rings the cry 
^Remember the Delamater.' There would not have been 
a divided party but for the defiance that met the protest of 
months ago against slated faction, unrepresentative candi- 
dates and that ignores honest-minded, unselfish opinion. 

"There is a settled purpose in Pennsylvania to put down the 
rule of beer, banks and big corporations in our Legislature 



QUAY— A 8HAM REFORM EK. I45 

and public offices at Harrisburg. It is to be worked at until 
accomplished. A party where one man rules for the benefit 
of one man and his political family only is not the Eepublican 
party that can command our respect, influence or votes. We 
shall no longer submit to the filling of the public offices and 
Legislature with sworn or pledged partners in degrading pub- 
lic office to mere personal ends and emoluments. Ranks are 
closing up everywhere and the people will as never before 
show a common front to the enemy. We shall have home 
rule and not Beaver or Allegheny or Philadelphia ward rule. 
No one county, or three, shall compel capitulation of all the 
rest on any terms. 

"Silently we have borne the odium of acquiescence in the 
conduct of public affairs, and we will do so no longer. It but 
aggravates our guilt of unintentional complicity to go farther, 
and neglect of plain duty in voting down all the machine 
candidates is equivalent to justifying their acts. To the list 
of heroic defenders of the flag in camp at the front we enroll 
ourselves to guard the Treasury of the State from further at- 
tack and to recover the jeopardized deposits of taxpayers' 
money scattered about in bankrupt and other unguaranteed 
institutions. Plereafter we must have some guarantee of every 
Guarantor. 

"Those who have dictated the management of our money 
concerns have been proven to be intimately concerned in the 
handling of that money, and henceforth they must cease to 
control it by State Treasurers, who, when one is inducted into 
office, retains the previous incumbent as general manager. 
The law requiring the State Treasurer to retire at the end of 
his term evidently does not retire him. What is the use of 
laws and enactments, anyway, when by political manoeuvering 
they are set aside whenever it is the interest of the rush crowd 
to play football with them? 

"The proceedings of the last Legislature and the records of 
previous Legislatures, and the set-up jobs of candidates and 
unfinished business of the last Legislature for the next Leg- 
islature portend a storm of trouble, the end of which no one 
can forecast. 



146 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"The reign of terror by the bosses must be resisted at every 
cost. The present Republican party is a counterfeit coin. 
The operators of it must recast their machine or it will be 
broken to unmendable pieces. 

"I appear in the contest not desiring to be a candidate, but 
willing to act as one of many leaders firmly pledged not only 
to act jointly but bound to the thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of the people, to labor for a new order of political ad- 
ministration of the laws and business affairs of the State. 

"The opposition is not of my making; it rises from the Ve- 
suvius at Harrisbur^, belching forth frauds upon the people, 
often hidden by harmless smoke. 

WHAT QUAY AND HIS MEN TRIED TO DO. 

"I challenge denial that the Republican party did, under 
its boss leadership, fight hard last winter to do the following 
six things. 

"1. Put a tax upon the public schools in the effort to take 
away their needed support for the benefit of Mr. W. H. An- 
drews and other brewing interests in the State. Thus did it 
try to dwarf the children of the poor by taxing knowledge. 

"2. It whitewashed the crimes of the oleo business, and the 
committee charged the State $17,000 for sixteen meetings. 

"3. Its penitentiary investigating committee charged $15,- 
000, or $1,250 for each man, and a $2,500 hotel bill. 

"4. The anthracite coal committee bill disclosed nothing 
but the committee's bill of $11,987. 

The Lexow committee of W. H. Andrews' and Quay's to 
blackmail Philadelphians probably cost $5,000, or, at the ut- 
most, $10,000 actual expenditure at honest and usual rates 
of expenses charged to individuals, and Senator Andrews 
fought desperately to get $65,000. 

"6. Two high officials of the State were compelled to re- 
sign for complicity in unlawfully aiding and abetting with 
the State Treasurer to use the State money, afterward secured 
by bond and subsequently borrowed from the People's Bank, 
where $505,000 was retained on deposit by the State Trea- 
Burer. i ^ 



QUAT—A SHAM REFORMER, 147 

"I would add to this list, but for the reason that I must 
take my time to attend to one or two other matters to-night. 
First, I wish to say a few words that were ready last night at 
the Huntingdon meeting, but which I reserved to this meet- 
ing. 

WANAMAKER A FRIEND OF CORPORATIONS. 

"Some men say Mr. Wanamaker is opposed to corporations. 
I cannot permit that to be said unnoticed, and no man can say 
so if disposed to be fair. I am in favor of corporations and 
ready to aid always to protect vested rights. I never fought 
but once in my life with a corporation, and then it was not 
as an individual, but as the United States Government's Post- 
master General. My contention was first for lower rates to 
the government for government business, under the act of 
1866, which, in some way or another, notwithstanding the 
many reports of Congressional post ofiice committees that are 
a matter of record favoring the government's assumption of 
the telegraph business, have been mysteriously set aside, and, 
further, I contended for lower rates for the people. I sub- 
mit to you that telegraph and telephone rates are too high, 
and will always be so under existing monopolies. I proposed 
to Jay Gould, and argued it often, and, at times, believed 
he intended to consent to give his influence and power upon 
the side of the people by adopting a plan that I had embodied 
in a bill to be submitted to Congress to reduce the rates of 
telegraphing by making available all postal facilities, such as 
letter boxes, letter collectors and carriers, the use of post office 
buildings, saving duplications of officers, and sundry other 
economies, notably the use of postal stamps. 

"The two chief enemies of cheap telegraphy for the peo- 
ple are dead, but the great army of its foes, consisting of the 
thousands in legislative halls, and out of them, who get free 
stamps to frank messages as they please, are*" still living. I 
know it to be a fact that a United States Senator recently had 
the wire cleared from San Lucie to Philadelphia, and kept it 
for his personal use for a whole hour. I might do this my- 
self, as I sometimes did in a modified form while in Wash- 
ington, but I had then as I have now business relations of 



148 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

three firms doing a vast business that is paid for in cash at 
regular rates, that might sometimes justify personal favors 
balanced by other paying business and nothing to do with 
politics. 

"I believe that the telegraph companies should be owned 
by the government to conduct and safeguard communications 
between the people on a basis like that of the mail service, 
which is not required to water capital stock or pay dividends 
in cash to stockholders. A system in which the people are 
the stockholders, and pay themselves all the dividends in 
cheap postal rates and extended service into remote regions 
that need to be open to civilization whether the service pays 
or not. 

"The story of corporate influence and its grave conse- 
quences is long and staggering; it must come out, and when 
it does the law of public opinion and the rights of stockhold- 
ers will compel stringent laws to not only protect investments 
of widows and children and trust estates from waste, but to 
also make impossible the debauching of legislatures. That 
will be a day of great gain and blessed relief to corporations 
when they shall cease to be under the brass knuckles of politi- 
cal strikers. Please allow me to ask you to reflect upon a few 
more facts as to how the bosses carry on their business as con- 
trollers of Pennsylvania. 

"Senator Quay has not only become the political boss of 
Pennsylvania, by the manipulation of party machinery, with 
the use of the people's money and the aid of corporate in- 
fluence, but he has arrogated to himself the proprietorship, 
and insolently claims ownership to the people's right, and 
their suffrages, and they have not disputed his claims for 
years, because of fear, cupidity or indifference. 

"The manner by which he has seized and now holds the in- 
dependent title of this once free State of ours has become a 
fascinating study to many. The methods he employs to sell 
and barter away legislation, and to disfranchise great cities 
and whole sections of the State, show that the great freedom 
intended under laws of popular government has become a 
menace and a destroyer of our liberties, in the hands of des- 



QUAY— A SHAM REFORMER. 149 

perate men. It also shows the benumbing effect that long 
continued political debauchery is having upon our self-pro- 
tecting impulses. For, while the very thought of the enslaved 
Cubans strikes in the hearts of all a responsive chord, and 
great armies of Pennsylvanians are impatiently waiting to 
risk their lives to break loose the Spanish shackles from a peo- 
ple beyond our shores, these same liberty-loving people know 
they themselves are in just as absolute bondage in their own 
State, and they meekly submit and bow down, and pay tri- 
bute and are wronged and robbed by self-constituted rulers 
who have been less kind to the State of Pennsylvania than 
Weyler has been in Cuba. 

"Absolutism is the worst form of despotism, and absolutism 
exists in its most aggressive form in Pennsylvania to-day. In 
pther States men rule by genius. By stealth, cunning and 
gloved hands they shape the course of their parties. They- 
are always on the lookout for breakers, which they dodge if 
necessary to save the party craft. In Pennsylvania it is by 
boldness, defiance and brutality that bosses maintain their 
power. 

"The day has gone by in our State when political operations 
are performed with the cleansed, unerring blade of the skilled 
surgeon, to prevent party blood poisoning, but instead are 
used the septic poisoned tools of butchers, who care naught 
for party health nor life. 

QUAY'S SHAM REFORM DOCTRINES. 

"In 1895 Senator Quay promulgated his then famous (now 
infamous) reform doctrines, with which he buncoed the good 
people of Pennsylvania for two years. He decried the use of 
every political agency that ever gave him power. It seems 
like a monstrous thing to have made people believe. But 
they thought it an eleventh hour repentance. They reasoned 
that an unsavory career of thirty years had overcharged a 
depleted physical system; that as th"e sun was setting on his 
political life the boss longed to place upon the statute books 
of the State, that had given him great honor, some official 
act or law that would not be tainted with shame. 



150 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Developments have shown that while Senator Quay was 
winning victories on his reform declarations he was plotting 
and secretly pulling every wire to make deals and combina- 
tions at total variance with every line of his reform platform. 
Publicly he painted the Eepublican organizations in the two 
great cities of the State with colors of infamy. He gained 
the support of anti-machine organizations and newspapers 
upon his pledge to consecrate his life to making the memory 
of these organizations, so reprehensible to him, horrid night- 
mares of the past. He was amazed at himself to think that he 
could ever have had relations with such wicked men in the 
past. He swore to purge himself of the awful contaminations 
of the past by blotting these, to him, evil agencies entirely 
out. 

"But you cannot fool all the people all the time, and it came 
to pass that in an unguarded moment he committed a politi- 
cal crime. That political crime must be defended, and he, 
himself, gave to the public press of the State a copy of a pro- 
posed agreement that he himself had prepared and secretly 
offered to these agents of political darkness that he had sworn 
to destroy. And this he did at the very time that he was 
publicly pretending to lead the hosts of reform against these 
same men. 

"And most strange, is it not, that this agreement failed to 
stipulate that these wicked men should at once transform 
themselves into nightmares of the past, and, stranger still, 
that he should offer to make these same men masters for four 
years over the very people whom he had promised to free? 

"What a chapter of deception! What a book of duplicity! 
While the air was charged with Senator Quay's denunciations 
of the Philadelphia and Pittsburg politicians; and while his 
cowardly attack upon one of them in the United States Sen- 
ate (which he afterwards declared to be false) was being made 
an issue in his fake reform battle, this alleged reformer was 
secretly seeking interviews with and submitting written pro- 
position to them with a view of selling out the reform forces 
for his own personal gain. His shameful scheme failed only 
because the Pittsburg and Philadelphia politicians refused to 
deal. 



QUAY— A SHAM REFORM EK. 151 

AN INFAMOUS BARGAIN THAT FAILED. 

"The proposition prepared by Senator Quay, bearing date 
January 1, 1896, and sent to Senator Flinn during the bogus 
reform battle, read as follows: 

" 'January 1, 1896. 

" 'Until January 1, 1890, the following shall be the politi- 
cal conditions in Allegheny county: 

" 'Mr. Quay is to have the absolute support of the State 
and national politics, and is to sustain through his friends 
all regular Eepublican nominees, and the straight Eepublican 
organization. If Mr. Quay is a candidate for United States 
Senator in 1899 he is to have the united support of the Sena- 
tors and members of the Legislature from Allegheny county. 
In every other case his leadership is to be followed by united 
support in the Legislature, and in national and State con- 
ventions, except where a bona fide candidate appears in Alle- 
gheny county. In the national convention in 1896 the dele- 
gates from the Twenty-second Congressional district shall sus- 
tain Senator Quay unless otherwise agreed hereafter. Mr. 
Magee shall not be a delegate to any national or State con- 
ventions of 1896. In the Senatorial districts now represented 
by Steele and Upperman the said Senators shall retire, and 
Senator Quay and his friends shall name the successors to 
Senator Steele and the other parties hereto shall name the 
successor to Senator Upperman. For Legislative and State 
conventions for the year 1896 Senator Quay and his friends 
shall name the members and delegates from the First, 
Second, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Legislative districts. 
In 1896, personnel of the delegates in the Sixth and Eighth 
districts shall be a matter of conference between the parties 
hereto, and if no agreement be arrived at shall be settled by 
arbitration. Senator Upperman, in the city of Pittsburg, 
shall be first indorsed by the parties hereto residing there. 
No legislation is to be had at Harrisburg or desired, the en- 
actment of which will be to injure the character and business 
interests of the Pittsburg parties hereto; this, however, not to 
interfere with the general reform legislation outlined in the 
platform in the Eepublican State convention in 1895. In the 



152 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

Twenty-second Congressional district the candidate for Con- 
gress shall be named by the Pittsburg parties^ and shall be, so 
far as the affair can be controlled without opposition/ for 
nomination or election. All Senators and members shall sus- 
tain Senator Quay in the organization of the Legislature, and 
in the election of United States Senator during the term of 
this agreement, except as heretofore provided/ 

AS RECEIVED BY THE PRESS. 

"In March, 1896, the city papers of the State published the 
proposed agreement. Senator Quay acknowledged that he 
had written it, and it was acknowledged that he had written 
it, and it was used by him to shield a still baser political crime. 
Of all the papers in Pennsylvania that published this story of 
treachery, but one, to my knowledge, commented upon it ad- 
versely. The following editorial appeared in the Philadel- 
phia Ledger on March 20, 1896: 

" ^It has always been the popular belief — one strongly, 
clearly and eloquently formulated in President Lincoln's Get- 
tysburg address — that ours is a government of, for and by the 
people. Undoubtedly that was what the wise, patriotic found- 
ers intended it to be, but with new lords came new governing 
methods and forces, and if President Lincoln were living to- 
day and were to read the several agreements made respec- 
tively by certain Pittsburg politicians and Senator Quay, he 
would unquestionably modify the length of his famous me- 
morial speech by excluding from its application the people 
of the State of Pennsylvania.' 

"It appears, however, that this agreement, which provided 
for handing over to the absolute domination of Senator Quay 
the electorate and political affairs of the people of the Com- 
monwealth, and which also provided that he should be the 
sole arbitrator of all State legislation, including his own re- 
election to the Senate of the United States, was not consid- 
ered by him to be wholly satisfactory, it being deemed less 
stringent and too circumscribed to satisfy his demands for the 
absolute control of the government of Pennsylvania. Upon 
the authority of his son it is stated that he consequently pre- 



QUAY— A SHAM REFORMER. I53 

pared and submitted a form of agreement, type-written, em- 
bodying bis demands. 

"The theory of our government is that the people shall 
choose the delegates to the national convention, which nomi- 
nates the President of the United States; that they shall choose 
the delegates to Congressional and Legislative conventions, 
which nominate members of Congress and State Senators and 
Eepresentatives, and that these latter conventions shall name 
the Legislators and elect Federal Senators. This type-writ- 
ten agreement, however, proposed to take from the people 
of the State their right to do any of these things, and place 
them all in the hands of Senator Quay absolutely. Remark- 
able as these documents are in their purpose to take from 
the people and lodge wholly in the hands of Mr. Quay the 
political power of the people, it appears that there is nothing 
new in them. 

"It appears, however, that when Mr. Quay submitted his 
forms for unconditional surrender to Mr. Martin they were 
not subscribed to, and the effort to sell and deliver the politi- 
cal rights of citizens of Philadelphia and Pittsburg in a lump 
to Mr. Quay failed. 

"There is no intelligent citizen of Pennsylvania, in whom 
there survives a single claim of public spirit, who can thought- 
fully consider the above-stated agreement and negotiations 
without a profound sense of humiliation, indignation and 
disgust. 

"That the citizens of this great old Commonwealth should 
be openly, recklessly, shamefully made the mere traffic and 
commodities of the political market, in which their most pre- 
cious and sacred rights of citizenship are bargained for and 
sold by the most corrupt and venal politicians, should arouse 
the honest resentment of every good citizen throughout the 
State. When we consider the vicious lives, unenviable char- 
acters and smirched reputations of the practical politicians, 
great and small, who at present dominate the government of 
this State, there can be no other feeling than that of infinite 
shame that the government of this grand old Commonwealth 



154 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

can be in any manner or degree controlled by men whose very 
names are by-words, and cast scorn upon their bearers. 

"But it is fair to Senator Quay and his pliant, unscrupulous 
henchmen to say that not they, but the people themselves, 
are responsible for their arbitrary, blighting political rule. 
The people have given them the extraordinary power they 
exercise, to the deep humiliation of Pennsylvania. They are 
but the creatures of the criminal indifference of voters to 
their duties of citizenship, the first, greatest and most sacred 
of all duties. It is upon this indifference that these trade 
politicians exist and thrive. Eeplace it with popular political 
interest and energy, and our bosses, their ^rounders' and 
^heelers' of all degrees will cease to be.'^ 



FARMERS AND TAXATION. 



The Quay Machine has Farmed the Farmers and 

pocketed the proceeds — Schools and Asylums 

borrowing money while Millions are idle 

in the Treasury dra-wing interest for 

Quay — Asparagus at $i.oo 

a plate for Quay's 

favorites. 



A talk on taxation was given the farmers and miners of 
the Blossburg region on May lOth. It stirred the people 
greatly. Mr. Wanamaker said: 

"I wish to discuss with you briefly the object of taxation. 
Certain revenues must be provided to run the National and 
State governments. The only way to provide revenue is by 
taxation. Every American who enjoys the blessings of 
liberty should willingly pay his or her just share and bless the 
government in which they have a proprietary interest. The 
subject of taxation is one that is kept before and on the 
minds of the people constantly. It is the one rock on which 
labor and capital divide. It has been the fruitful theme of 
the agitator and the demagogue; it has been the fascinating 



PARMER8 AND TAXATION. I55 

study of the philanthropist. Its inequalities are diverting 
the sympathy of the masses from those who possess wealth. 
"Continued overtaxing of the people breeds revolutions and 
disregard for governing forces. I believe that every tax-payer 
in Pennsylvania is willing to pay his full share of the neces- 
sary expenditures of the State government. It is the un- 
equalized distribution of the burden of taxation, which al- 
ways faUs upon those least able to bear it, that constitutes 
the wrong. Taxes do not often lessen, the high-water mark 
is constantly being raised. New advantages and increased 
facilities do not keep pace with ever-increasing rates. Indi- 
vidual interests without power to concentrate opposition 
must suffer at the hands of great combinations of wealth that 
control legislative bodies. 

PAY FOR MORE THAN THEY GET. 

"It is an admitted fact that the people of Pennsylvania 
pay higher taxes than those of other States. It is also true 
that they do not get all that they pay for and pay for more 
than they get. I conduct a business that does every year a 
trade far greater than the combined cost of running the State 
government, taking care of her charities and giving $5,500, 
000 to public schools, and I want to say, as a business man 
that I consider the cost of running the State government 
is at least one-third too much. And from a careful study 
of the extravagances, to say nothing of the apparent frauds 
that abound in many different departments, I believe that 
an honest and economical administration of the departments 
of the State government will show that my estimate is not 
too high. And further I will say without fear of honest con- 
tradiction, that under the present political management of 
the Staters affairs the tax rate will not decrease, but must 
necessarily be higher. I want to say to the miners, to the 
farmers, to the mechanics, and to every man within the hear- 
ing of my voice, who is a wage earner, that after one-third 
of your taxes had been saved by business integrity and econ- 
omy in the management of the State affairs, if you could 
break the mighty grasp of the brewers, the liquor leagues, 
the pools and trusts, upon the Legislature of Pennsylvania, 



156 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

one-third of your share of the balance could be saved to you. 
If blazing the way to save you thirty- three cents out of every 
dollar of your taxes is being a demagogue, you may have it 
so if you like. 

"The seeds I scatter among you are not seeds of dissatis- 
faction, but flowering seeds of hope of better days, of right- 
eous rule and prosperous times. I wish to impress upon 
you and impress it strongly that you are being personally 
and seriously injured by a political system that you need aot 
have, except you are willing and neglect your own affairs. 
Before I came to Tioga county I was informed that the 
miners of the section were among the most intelligent voters 
in the State, and for that reason I have taken the subject of 
taxation for my speech to-night. 

"During the years of 1895 and 1896, when the dark shadow 
of business depression hung over the country, when your 
mines and your workshops were idle, when the gaunt form 
of hunger and starvation stalked through many villages, and 
previously prosperous industrial centres, when, as I am told, 
in this very section, the hand of charity was stretched forth 
and aided many honest people who could not obtain work, 
and when every business enterprise was forced to endure the 
most stringent economy, during this time that money 
brought any price that was demanded the Quay machine was 
withholding an average of $5,000,000 of State deposits from 
your schools and counties and using it for its own profit. 

INCREASED EXPENSES FOR THE PEOPLE TO BEAR. 

"During this same time, when the State's business was 
at low ebb, the cost of running three State departments alone 
for two years was increased nearly $1,000,000, or more than 
43 per cent. There are few business houses in America that 
could have survived such increased expenses. Within the 
past month the expose in the printing department has fur- 
nished you with an object lesson of the way of machine busi- 
ness methods. Quay's lieutenants were caught in a $53,000 
bird book steal. The last Legislature authorized the printing 
of a pamphlet at a cost of 13 cents a copy, and it was ac- 
cidentally discovered that instead of those innocent little 



FARMERS AND TAXATION. 15 7 

pamphlets, tons of fancy pictured and high-priced leather- 
bound books, costing $3.50 a volume, were being printed. 

"They were to be held under cover until a Quay Governor 
was elected, when the bill was to be presented and, of course, 
passed. Every man connected with the job has been forced 
to resign by Governor Hastings. The old State Printer was 
connected with this job. The new State Printer is not to be 
outdone, however, and he presented a bill for $11,000 for 
his first three months' work, and the Attorney General dis- 
covered that $7,600 of the amount was made up of fraud- 
ulent charges. If the Attorney General had been a part of 
the Quay machine, as aforetime, there is no kind of doubt 
but that the bill would have been paid without a word. 

"There was appropriated $67,500 for contingent expenses 
to the different departments. 

THOUSANDS COULD BE SAVED ANNUALLY. 

"The honest and economical expenditure of these funds, 
I am convinced, would save enough to pay the expenses of 
maintaining two State hospitals like the splendid one you 
have in Blossburg. The expense bills and mileage grabs, 
defeated by the 'Seventy-six' and vetoed by the Governor, 
aggregate $87,500. Every dollar of this would have been 
paid but for the anti-Quay men in the Legislature and an 
un-Quay-owned Governor. The notorious Lexow bill for 
$66,000, with hotel bills for each member of $23 per day 
and asparagus at $1 a stalk, would have been paid but for 
the opposition of the ^Seventy-six.^ 

"If the next Governor and Legislature are controlled by 
Senator Quay the bill will certainly be paid, with interest. 
Why not, as the bill, not having been paid out of the Treas- 
ury, must still be unpaid. Of course it could never pass 
under a Lexow title, but it will be hid, perhaps in part, in 
the general appropriation and other bills under cover that 
can be forced through. These practices did not originate 
with the last Legislature, but have been carried on for years. 
The exposures came through the efficient work done by the 
'Seventy-six.^ 



158 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Since Senator Quay has controlled the State machine, 
reckoning the interest on your money that he has appro- 
priated the use of at 2J per cent., he has taken from you 
from this source alone $2,500,000. Your school moneys are 
due you, and the State has millions in political banks that 
the machine withholds for its own use. Your School Di- 
rectors are forced to pay interest for money for teachers at 
the very banks that have your money and are paying the 
State machine for its use. Quay's machine gets the interest 
on your money; you get increased taxes. Your county bor- 
rows money and the interest is added to your taxes. You 
are compelled to pay your personal tax, which is sent to the 
State Treasurer, who retains for months the three-fourths 
that is due your county. 

"Senator Quay's committee comes to learn why the miners 
have not plenty of work; they render you no aid, but try to 
wring $11,000 from you which is to be added to your taxes; 
you elect from your own town to the State Senate a man 
to protect your interests and he tries to take $597.60 from 
you for expenses he never paid. He tried to add just that 
much more to your taxes. Now he asks you to vindicate his 
course. The actual expense to the tax-payer for every day 
the Legislature was in session last year was more than $3,000. 

THE MACHINE MUST BE BROKEN. 

"Thirty days were lost by holding back the appointment 
of House and Senate committees to use the places to procure 
votes for the machine candidate for United States Senator. 
This cost the tax-payers nearly $100,000. Thirty days more 
were lost by the inexcusable absence of the Speaker of the 
House, and the taxpayers paid nearly another $100,000 for 
indulgences of Quay's chosen Speaker. Another thirty days 
were lost in the machine manoeuvres to protect beer, which 
delay cost the tax-payers nearly another $100,000. 

'T^o session of the Pennsylvania Legislature ought to last 
more than one hundred days, and the cost should not be 
much more than one-half what it was last session. But 
besides all these the Quay machine tried to take nearly 
$10,000 every two years from the schools of Tioga county. 



QUAY AND WANAMAKER. I59 

This meant $10,000 more added to your taxes and your 
State Senator did not raise a protesting voice. Unless these 
awful extravagances are stopped by the smashing of the 
machine and stopped this very year, the tax-payers will 
soon face a deficit of four or five millions of dol- 
lars. Unless the machine hold is broken, beer will not 
be made to pay any portion of it, and corporations will be 
shielded. It is no longer a matter of sentiment. It is not 
a question of whether you like this man or that man, it is 
a plain simple business proposition. Vote for the Quay* 
machine and pay more and more taxes, or vote against the 
Quay machine and stop the defiant plunderers.'^ 



QUAY DID NOT MAKE WANAMAKER 
POSTMASTER-GENERAL. 



The old lie of the Machine answered by Mr. Wana- 

maker — Quay tried to own President Harrison 

and w^as snubbed — Quay indebted to 

Wanamaker for great favors — 

An interesting recital. 



Ex-Postmaster General John Wanamaker told the story 
of how he came to be Postmaster General under President 
Harrison to a vast audience at Wellsboro on the night of 
May 11th. Quay and the bosses have claimed that Mr. 
Wanamaker was an ingrate for attacking Quay after he had 
made him Postmaster General. Here is Mr. Wanamaker's 
reply: 

"The Quay machine runs the Pennsylvania farm by steam 
generated from the taxpayers' pocket-books and grinds meal 
for its head and his favored Andrews and Walter T. Merrick, 
the Saylors, and the tribe of faithful cliquers who only hold 
their places and subsist upon the wheat of your raising while 
you live upon the chaff of their choosing. 

"I dare not come to you with more indefinite talk upon 
this subject. I plainly, specifically and distinctly charge 
that whatever was done at the Legislature last winter that 



160 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

was bad was directly tlie work of Quay's machine, and since 
he controls that machine it follows that he might father its 
doings. It is true that the Legislature was not more than 
half as bad as it might have been, and as it intended to 
be, and that would have been but for the seventy-six mem- 
bers that fought it, but you owe no thanks to Mr. Quay for 
that. 

QUAY COULD ELECT HIS COACHMAN. 

"Never did he more doggedly and untiringly marshal his 
forces. The political machine, covered with debt, made the 
Harrisburg Legislature a Bloody Angle and won, not a vic- 
tory like our brave troops on Gettysburg, but left the field 
with half a victory. They got their United States Senator, 
and Mr. Quay, by the same methods, could have elected his 
coachman to be your United States Senator. They say that 
W. H. Andrews, manager of W. A. Stone's candidacy for 
Governor, is slated to be Mr. Quay's successor in the United 
States Senate, after he has squeezed out the orange and is 
ready to throw it away. 

"They secured the half loaf better than none by holding 
down the interest on State deposits to a pittance. They 
obtained the use of all the State money without any interest 
for more than another year. They got time vainly to try 
to mend the broken banks that had the State money — 
$505,000. Down went the Smedley Darlington, West Ches- 
ter, Bank with $60,000 State money; the People's Bank and 
the Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Banks, with $215,000, 
and the Guarantors' cooper shop of finance in Philadelphia, 
marking Pennsylvania wdth three B's as the Banner, Bank 
Banlvrupt State in 1898 in all the United States, and all 
these banks were connected by deposits and mangement with 
the politics of our State. 

THE GREAT CAPITOL JOB. 

"I charge that the Legislative action proves that all initial 
steps were taken after the mysterious burning of the Capitol 
to Inaugurate a great public buildings job. The fiocking of 
the political crows to the Capitol and the schemes for archi- 



QUAY AND WANAMAKUK. IQl 

tecting the thing were detected, and the effort to do some- 
thing worthy of Lorenzo, the magnificent, to match the 
Albany State House was checked only by the vigilance of the 
sentinels there on guard. 

"I charge that the bold seizure of the public money in the 
public Treasury by consent of the State Treasurer to pay 
$27,000 upon a pay roll irregular and unlawful was not only 
justified by the machine, but that they afterwards accepted 
the responsibility, and a number of them signed their 
names to an indemnity bond that resulted in forcing two 
of the highest officials out of their places in Governor Has- 
ting's closest official circle. This bond was afterwards by 
loans provided for, I may say, in one of the defunct Phila- 
delphia financial institutions, whieh loans a few days ago 
were not paid off. 

"1 charge that last winter, to the tune of over $159,000 
the Quay machine sought to take unrightfully money in the 
State Treasury for bogus investigations. I verily believe 
that there was what business men will universally confirm as 
abundant evidence of an attempt by certain members to 
charge an insurance company $50,000 as the price of stop- 
ping certain threatening injurious legislation, which, when 
exposed, was dropped without charge. I charge that the 
main, if not the sole, cause of the increasing taxation in the 
State is because of the woful waste of the Quay managing 
machine, and its necessities brought on by culpable corrupt- 
ing election methods. 

"I charge that there is unmistakable evidence that there 
was a bargain between the brewers and the bruisers of Ee- 
publican honor to tax the schools of the State instead of 
taxing the beer — this last battle of the brew still against the 
books, the hops against the hopes of our homes, the children. 

"Here are seven small pebbles that I will pick up and toss 
over to you Tioga county folk, with a wrapper around them 
that will explain just what they are: 

"First. As to holding public meetings — there is no other 
way to reach the machine. It is blind, deaf and dumb and 
will not see, hear or heed a protest, and further, the paper 
publishing Mr. Stone's speech knows in its own administra- 



162 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER, 

tion how impossible it is to get the Quay organs to publish 
anything not in accord with the Quay methods. Why, my 
friends, while they have published Colonel Stone's speech 
see if they will print a line about this meeting, and this 
other side I am giving to Congressman Stone's remarks and 
criticisms. Why, my friends, our only way to reach the 
people at all is by town meetings. 

"Second. I am set down as a party kicker, when, unlike 
my friend, I am not asking office from choice, and do not 
want the office, and in my first speech in Lancaster offered 
to retire from the contest if all the candidates would do so 
and let the people make choice. You know I did not seek 
any nomination, and that 400 men brought it to me and 
forced it upon me. I am a drafted man, doing duty for con- 
science's sake, and to differ from my party's practices in 
slating candidates and refusing to listen to any other Ke- 
publicans but the beef eaters is disloyalty. The inference is 
that Stone and Andrews are not kickers and we are. That 
they approve of boss rule and brewer dictation and bolting 
conventions as pure Eepublicanism and all else is unrepubli- 
can. I claim that I am the better Eepublican in trying to 
halt and turn about the team before it slides over the pre- 
cipice of defeat. 

QUAY DID NOT MAKE WANAMAKER. 

"Third. He states that in 1888 I was as good as any Re- 
publican in the State and I state I am in 1898, a better 
Eepublican than then. 

"Fourth. He states that I am seeking revenge against Mr. 
Quay for not allowing me to be Senator. This is a frank 
confession of the machine's responsibility in the defeat of 
the popular will of Tioga and other counties by the man 
who now asks you, the same M. S. Quay, to vote for him 
as United States Senator. I beg to say that I have nothing 
to be revenged for. Mr. Quay declared eight months before 
the Senatorial election that he would be for anyone but 
for me, and yet Mr. Stone says I was as good as any Eepub- 
lican in the State and had helped in the 1888 campaign, in 
which Mr. Quay at the time said himself I was his most 



QUAY AND WANAMAKER. 163 

dependable standby. My friends, everybody knew then and 
knows now that nobody stands any chance for election to 
anything against the boodle and the Andrews breweries. 

QUAY NEVER OWNED HARRISON. 

"Fifth. That I ought to be ashamed to treat poor Mr. 
Quay so horribly and that I owed to him my appointment. 
What bosh. Did Mr. Quay own the appointment and make 
Charles Emory Smith Postmaster General? Our Senator 
certainly never owned Benjamin Harrison — and could no 
more determine a Cabinet appointment with him than he 
could put the Allegheny Mountains in his eye or in his vest 
pocket. 

"Sixth. I have no personal quarrel with Quay. I never 
speak of him as a person, but as the Eepresentative of the 
machine which he has made and holds with the grip of a 
tyrant. In brief, let me say since I am drawn into these 
personal matters, involving Mr. Quay, that I need not stop 
with these words. If they want other interesting facts that 
I have faithfully kept, let me say that I never sought Mr. 
Quay in 1888 and that he sought me. That, if anything, 
I was inimical to him then, and had never been associated 
with him until he sent for me and said that on the eve of 
the Harrison campaign, he had been elected chairman by 
the National committee and was without funds, and begged 
my assistance in organizing financial aid. 

"I took three weeks to consider it, agreed to organize an 
unpolitical committee of business men and stipulated that 
my committee should have some supervision of the use of 
money, all of which was agreed to and complied with. I 
entered upon the work then exactly as I would do now if 
circumstances were the same with a threatening panic ahead, 
as there was since when Grover Cleveland was re-elected, I 
stood over the committee work faithfully. When it was over 
almost all of the National committee, some altogether un- 
known to me, urged my appointment in the Cabinet. 

"That unownable, never bluffed or bullied Gen. Harrison, 
then President-elect, knew something of me and wanted a 
business man in his Cabinet and in his department, and 



164 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

the friends urging my appointment all unknown to Mr. 
Quay, were such that if Mr. Quay had opposed me I believe 
the President would have selected me. The last man in the 
United States to claim that he dictated an appointment of 
President Harrison is M. S. Quay. He tried it on and knows 
how he failed. He has owned Stone and the Andrews outfit, 
the Pennsylvania machine, but he has never yet quite owned 
a President or claimed to own the United States. 

"I filled my place at the Post Ofiice desk as best I could 
I did not attend to politics then, though I served Mr. Quay 
as I could as my Senator, and the head of the party by 
virtue of his chairmanship of the National Committeee, and 
went back to Pennsylvania and to my business, and Mr. Quay 
will tell you that we have not been associated since. Please, 
then, remember that all my association practically with Mr. 
Quay is from 1888 to 1892, and the last half of 1892 I parted 
company with him to stand by President Harrison, who Mr. 
Quay t^en opposed as he now opposes all men in any sense 
like him. 

QUESTIONS FOR WILLIAM A. STONE. 

"Seventh. 1 think I have covered these personal matters 
sufficiently though they have some general importance, and 
will dismiss further consideration by saying that in 1860 
and in 1861 I was under the doctor^s care and spitting blod 
and was examined by the physician for military service and 
turned down as unfit from the condition of my lungs. That 
my war service was to organize, with George H. Stuart, the 
Christian Commission, who side by side have their places in 
the history of the war, for battle-field and hospital service 
for the sick and wounded. 

"Perhaps Mr. W. A. Stone may turn his steps to Tioga 
before the next convention, and if so I wish you would ask 
him to answer, first: Was Quay the master spirit of the last 
Legislature? Did the Quay majority vote for investigating 
committee steals? Did the Quay majority try to defeat the 
interest on State deposits bill? Did they uphold the brewers 
at the expense of the schools when they tried to rob our 
children of one million dollars in school appropriations? 



QUAY AND WANAMAKEK. 165 

QUESTIONS FOR SENATOR QUAY. 

''Is it true that the State Treasury has been the citadel 
of the machine, that money has been portioned out to favor 
its banks many times for political favors, that notes for the 
bosses have been taken for individual accounts by banks so 
favored and the sums gradually charged off to profit and loss 
till the debt was paid; that millions of dollars in lieu of in- 
terest that should have gone to the people have been used 
to bolster up a cruel and monstrous machine alike a menace 
to the people of the State and the popular government? 

"Did Senator Saylor try to filch $1,700 from the Treasury 
for alleged expenses in investigating the condition of miners 
in Western Pennsylvania? Did Senator Quay reward Mr. 
Saylor by having him appointed Consul to Matanzas? Did 
Senator Quay command the defeat of Senator Kauffman 
because he was honest and stood for the people's rights and 
refused to wear a Quay collar? Did not the last Legisla- 
ture favor public plunder, mileage grabbers, official extrava- 
gance. Treasury looters, reduction of public school appro- 
priations, the squandering of the State funds in Treasury 
raids and speculations with the people's money, the robbing 
of the tax-payers, the increase of political offices? 

"My friends, this is the forty-seventh speech I have made 
in this campaign. It is an extraordinary experience to have. 
Though a better Eepublican now than in 1888, I did not 
know as late as 1895 the extreme and dismal depths to 
which the Republican bosses had driven their machine, 
plunging it in debt, difficulty and disaster. It is to Mr. 
Quay and the Senatorial defeat that I owe the discovery of 
the sorry plight of the Republican party, driven to despera- 
tion to hold itself by money for elections and to pay salaries 
of political workers. A plain duty to stand by the seventy- 
six honest and true men trying at Harrisburg to keep from 
under the heelers held me in Harrisburg last winter, and by 
my organized plans I had laid bare to me the method and 
moves of the most corruptible ring the State ever had, and 
I should be worse than a Benedict Arnold if I were to be 
silent while the State tax-payers are sold out for the benefit 
of a few ring-ruling robbers of the public Treasury. 



166 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"I dare not be silent. I do not want to be Governor, and 
it is even now too late to stop the Kepublican chariot, that 
is in fact only a Quay chariot, driving on to destruction." 



IN GENERAL REEDER'S HOME. 



A scathing arraignment of the ex-Secretary — Some 
infamous slanders refuted before cheering thou- 
sands — General Reeder invited to answer 
a few pertinent questions — The Re- 
publican Party a political trust 
^for the benefit of M. S. . 

EL 

Quay and his friends. 
Makers of black 
history ex- 
posed. 



Easton, the home of Ex-Secretary of the Commonwealth 
Frank Reeder, never saw a greater crowd in its Opera House 
than greeted Hon. John Wanamaker on the night of May 
13th. Mr. Wanamaker was the centre of cheering thousands 
as he rose to speak and to refute some vicious and infamous 
slanders that had been circulated about him in this city. Mr. 
Wanamaker said: 

"When I received at the hands of the General County 
Committee of the Bourse meeting a leadership which I did 
not choose for myself, I said I would make fifty speeches 
in the State. This is the fifty-ninth meeting and fifty-fifth 
speech, and I am more than glad that it is at Easton. The 
adoption of the old-time New England town -meeting dis- 
cussion of public affairs was not a matter of choice, but a 
necessity arising from a press largely muzzled to news and to 
a considerable extent given over to colored photographing. 
Were there to be but one more meeting in the State, and it 
were left to me to decide where it should be, I would, choose 
Easton, for reasons partly personal. 

"Crucifixion is still the price of serving the public. The 
Galilean and Calvary are inseparable. Abraham Lincoln had 
to make a sacrificial offering on his country's altar. James 



IN GENERAL REE DEW 8 HOME. 167 

A. Garfield threw back his arms and made the sign of a 
blood-stained cross on the marble floor where he fell by the 
greed of an office seeker. It will be so while the world 
stands. The path to victory leads through the valley of 
sacrifice. 

"Not to be afraid is something, but courage to go straight 
on is infinitely more. 

"One must ballast the soul with patience, and not mind 
the storms. So also may one walk over the highest mountain 
one step at a time. 

"I have waited for a fitting time to take notice publicly 
of vile falsehoods circulated in this community attributed 
to one individual and family who owe me kindness for favors 
received and not malicious slander. 

Tender-handed stroke a nettle 
And it stings you for your pains. 

DEFIES HIS SLANDERERS. 

"Were the statements I have heard second-hand brought 
to me by any one willing to be responsible for them I would 
prosecute to the fullest extremity of the law. I deny them in 
toto, and defy the slanderers, holding myself ready to prove 
their falsity by a jury of even an hundred unpicked men. 

"A man, no matter how honored a name he wears, to 
accept his hospitalities on the pretensions of friendship, and 
with malice aforethought and murder in his heart wilfully 
and without truth or truthful evidence vilifies the family of 
a man, thereby to serve his political fortunes, is unworthy 
of recognition by decent people and has nothing to vindicate 
by his friends or party until he publicly confesses his wrong- 
doing. I can forgive a man who does me wrong, but not 
until he makes the utmost restitution possible for the free 
coinage the base work of his brain. This, then, is the motion 
I make in this Court of the people to enter judgment against 
my vilifiers and by denial, defiance and brief explanation to 
close the case for the present. With your permission I beg 
now to submit for your consideration a plea not as a lawyer, 
but as a citizen, for the State and the Republican party. If 
I make out my case I ask you to veto the acts of your State 



168 8PEECHES OF EON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

leaders and their county representatives by refusing them 
another trial and dismissing them to private life to spend 
the emoluments that life service in office has given them. 
To rightfully claim your serious thought and energetic ac- 
tion I know I must file specific charges for you to make up 
your opinion upon. I premise said eharges by the statement 
that the speeches I have made during the last sixty days are 
not unrelated chapters of the Eepublican party's manage- 
ment, or rather mismanagement, but the authenticated his- 
tory bound up in the records at Harrisburg and provable by 
many ready witnesses at command. 

STRAIGHTFORWARD PROPOSITIONS. 

"I submit, first, that the Eepublican party as at present 
constituted is a most dangerous political trust, composed of 
two National Senators and twenty Congressmen and the 
large majority of 254 State Legislators at Harrisburg, who, 
by dictation, dispose of pmblic moneys, enact laws and choose 
administrators of them to the detriment of the public wel- 
fare, said appointees not recognizing the people, but yielding 
first allegiance to their masters and bosses. 

"I submit, second, that this political trust, known as the 
Quay-Andrews-Eeeder-Elkin machine, uses its usurped 
power and ill-gotten gains in perpetuating itself to the 
damage of the tax-payers and people, generally. 

"I submit, third, that the audacity of this Pennsylvania 
machine enters into conspiracies to cripple the President of 
the United States in his purposes in conducting public busi- 
ness as important as our relations with Spain; seeks to 
cripple the postal business of seventy-five millions, specially 
attacking the convenience of business people and the welfare 
of rural communities; conducts election campaigns by the 
flagrant use of large sums of money contributed by corpora- 
tions, capitalists, contractors and payers for legislation. 

^'I submit, fourth, that the service of self-respecting men 
is lost to the Eepublican party by vile misrepresentations of 
reputable people, employment of bogus detectives, venomous 
falsifiers, a subsidized press and conspirators, who dare any 
plot or defilement, able to exert political control and by pro- 



IN GENERAL REE DEWS HOME. 169 

tecting legislation and domination of legal appointees of dis- 
trict attorneys and others not in elective, but appointive 
offices. 

"I submit, fifth, that the State funds have been and are 
squandered through the processes controlled by the machine. 

"I submit, sixth, that the State Treasurer being named 
by the bosses, who control his election and who direct the 
custody of the funds, endangers the safety of the State's 
money as proven by the recent developments of the three 
failed banks in Philadelphia and West Chester. 

"I submit, seventh, that the use of these banks by the 
bosses, known to be large borrowers for personal purposes, 
as well as prviate and pool speculators, should be a warning 
to the taxpayers who are interested in the schools and chari- 
ties of the State. 

LOBBYISTS SWELL THE COSTS. 

"I submit, eighth, that there is evidence to form belief 
upon that the appropriations to the educational institutions, 
charities and hospitals of the State could be largely reduced 
without one dollar of actual loss to said institutions, if the 
cost of lobbying and attorneys did not have to be paid out 
of the appropriations. 

"I submit, ninth, that the evidence of the unlawful taking 
of money out of the State Treasury by the consent of the 
Quay Treasurer, now employed in the State Treasury as as- 
sistant to the present Treasurer, and the justification of it 
by Frank Reeder, the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and 
John P. Elkin, chairman of the State Committee, who with 
his master, M. S. Quay, who first elected himself chairman of 
the State Committtee, which was done upon his own state- 
ment after spending between $200,000 and $250,000 sub- 
sequently caused Mr. Elkin to be elected chairman, in order 
that he might hold control of conventions, contested seats 
and rulings affecting committees, that this flagrant abuse 
of official place is reprehensible in the highest degri&e, result- 
ing in the dismissal of these two officials from the Adminis- 
tration. 



170 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"It is either true or it is not true and I submit it as easily 
capable of proof one way or the other by your own towns-, 
men, that Eeeder, Elkins and others covertly extracted from 
the Treasury on a loaded pay roll the sum of $27,000. 

"I submit, tenth, that an effort was made of the most des- 
perate character to favor beer brewers as a reward for large 
subscriptions to the last Senatorial campaign, whereby the 
schools of the entire State would have suffered impairment 
or the million of dollars attempted to be taken from them 
would have had to be raised by additional taxation now 
heavily crushing the people, because needlessly high owing 
to extravagance and evil legislation. 

"I submit, eleventh, that the loss of school fund to this 
county of Northamptou but for the interference of the 
seventy-six led by Eobert K. Young and Frederick B. Smith, 
of Tioga County, would have been $15,675.42 each two 
years. 

QUESTIONS THAT EMBARRASS. 

"With the foregoing propositions for your careful con- 
siderations I respectfully submit ten questions which you 
can possibly get the ex-Secretary of the Commonwealth, resi- 
dent in your midst, to answer. 

A. Is it not a fact that M. S. Quay and the Andrews ma- 
chine in full power in the last Legislature governed what 
legislation should be taken up and when it should be taken 
up? 

B. Did not the formation of the Senate and House Com- 
mittees depend solely upon the majority ruling there and 
under control of the majority? 

"C. What Committees on Railroads and Banks were 
formed by consultation if not command of Philadelphia cor- 
porations? 

"D. Were not the committees to investigate Oleo, Hosack 
chairman; Anthracite mining, Coyle chairman; the miners' 
condition in the western part of the State, Saylor chairman; 
the methods and condition of the State Treasurer, Senator 
Snyder chairman, all selected by the Quay leaders and with 
a Quay majority in each case resulting in huge whitewashing 



IN GENERAL REE DEWS HOME. 17^ 

jobs and immense drafts on the Treasury amounting in tlie 
first instance to $159,000 until cut down by the Governor's 
vetoes. In the case of Hosack, did he not refuse to have 
the sum of $597.60 the committee tried to put in his pocket 
for mileage he had not spent? 

E. Was not Senator Saylor rewarded by the machine with 
a foreign consulate after he attempted to take money out 
of the Treasury, the major part of which he publicly con- 
fessed to have not been expended? 

"F. Has the indebtedness to the State Treasury of $27,000 
for the padded pay roll, subsequently transferred to the 
People^s Bank, where there was $505,000 of State money, 
been all paid and by whom? State the names and portions 
of the persons borrowing it and what collateral if any were 
given for this large loan at the time the bank was insolvent. 

WHO SHARED THE PROFITS? 

"Gr. Who was to share in the profits of the State printing, 
where in a single instance a book that orignally was to cost 
13 cents a copy came through at a charge of $3.50 per copy, 
and which were the scandals of the State Printing office, 
compelling the Governor to put out all the officials? Why 
were they not prosecuted instead of dismissed? 

'rE. Is there not every reason to believe that almost if 
not all the bills of Lexow-Andrews-Hardenbergh-McCarroll- 
Collector Thomas-and-others committee are bogus? The 
amounts unspent, and that instead of $65,000 the bill should 
not be more than $10,000, for what was actually spent? 

"I. Is not the object of the nomination of a favorite son 
of Northumberland County, a decoy for M. S. Quay's benefit, 
and therefore a deception proposed to be practiced on the 
voters of Northampton County? 

'^J. Is it not a well-known fact that all the power of the 
Quay machine was exerted at the last Legislature to pass a 
bill to relieve the Guarantors' Company by enabling them 
legally to conceal their condition and escape responsibilites 
when they were hopelessly insolvent to the extent of 
$700,000? And did not the ex-State Chairman Thomas V. 
Cooper, the president of the Guarantors', labor incessantly 



172 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

to pass that bill? And did not one of th» United States Sena- 
tors make a trip from Washington to Harrisburg, and spend 
a whole day and night in the Senate, making his office the 
Speaker's room, working frantically as one of the directors 
of the now defunct Guarantors' to pass that bill? Explain 
what part of the capital of the State Insurance Company, if 
any, connects it with the Guarantors' Company? 

"Permit me to ask did you ever hear of the notorious Fire 
Alarm bill? It was an act to require stores, factories, ware- 
houses, office buildings, school houses and public institutions 
to put in automatic fire alarms at great cost, and the inter- 
esting part developed is that the only system that could be 
used under this act was owned by politicians. The moving 
spirit of the company was your townsman. If the bill had 
become a law himself and colleagues would have wrung 
millions out of the people of Pennsylvania. I am^told that 
the office furniture and company's effects are now stored in 
this gentleman's cellar in this city. This gentleman's in- 
dustry was almost phenomenal. It is almost impossible to 
find any machine scheme, however vicious, in which he did 
not play a leading part. But the climax was reached when 
he signed the infamous indemnity bond that led to his forced 
retirement from Governor Hastings' cabinet. 

WHY QUAY LIKES REEDER 

"Do you all understand what the indemnity bond was? 
It was a bond to personally protect the State Treasurer in 
unlawfully paying between $20,000 and $30,000 of the 
money from the State Treasury on a bogus pay roll that had 
been established to make good the promises made by the 
machine in the Senatorial fight. The money to reimburse 
the State Treasurer was intended to be taken from the State 
Treasur}'^ under the cover of the general appropriation bill. 
The fraudulent item of $25,000 did pass, but was vetoed 
by the Governor. Your townsman is now an alleged can- 
didate for Governor. It is a well-known fact that Senator 
Quay has said that he would like to see Reeder vindicated for 
conspiring to unlawfully take the taxpayers' money. It is 
also well known that Senator Quay says Reeder^s record wiU 



IN GENERAL HEED Eli' IS HOME. I73 

remove all possibility of his being a candidate this year. Do 
you wonder that Senator Quay feels kindly toward ex-Sec- 
retary Frank Eeeder? None has been more subservient. 
None have thought less for themselves. None have done 
more questionable things. None have helped to wrong the 
people under the orders of Senator Quay more than has 
Reeder. But there is a particular reason why he might wish 
to make Eeeder Governor now which I make most emphatic. 
He may disgrace the Republican Party with this man, but 
he dare not wreck the party by nominating him. But why 
should Quay want Reeder this time? It is because Quay 
wants another vindication, and through the election of 
Reeder he believes he might get it. But vindication for 
what? For being himself a party to the infamous indemnity 
bond. 

"I want you to know that it is generally stated that on 
that eventful night in Speaker Boyer's room, on Front street, 
in Harrisburg, Senator Quay was present and personally di- 
rected the indemnity scheme. United States Senator Pen- 
rose, Lieut.-GovernoT Lyon, Speaker of the House Boyer, 
Secretary of Commonwealth Reeder, Deputy Attorney Gen- 
eral and Chairman of the Republican State Committee Elkin, 
State Treasurer Haywood and several other politicians of 
lesser prominence were there, and under orders of the bosses 
the majority, if not all of them, are alleged to have signed 
the indemnity bond. I do not go behind the bush to hide in 
an ambuscade in giving out these facts — they are not as- 
saults upon private citizens, but they are the unfolding of 
the records of the State and National officials done by virtue 
of their leadership in running the Republican machine. 

^OLS TO PRY OPEN THE VAULTS. 

"Fellow-citizens of Easton, these eleven plain propositions 
and ten clear questions are laid before you. It is not private 
business we are discussing, but the public aifairs of our State, 
as conducted by the Quay machine, that seeks to recover 
losses by forcing upon the people its slate for the next Gov- 
ernor and Legislature. Kauffman, and all like him, must 
go to make way for tools who can be used to pry open the 



174 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

State Treasury to the Lexows, the Andrewses, Coyles, Say- 
lors and their successors. 

"I appeal to you to avert this disaster and to disregard 
favorite sons and county lines if you hope for the preserva- 
tion of the Eepublican party. 

"I believe we are in grave peril. I defy the Quay machine 
to nominate W. A. Stone for Governor unless it wants the 
disruption of the party. To act as if nobody but the cor- 
poration givers and the politicians had anything to say about 
it is to invite ruin. The key to internal unity of the party 
is to do something for the people. 

"Their rights have passed away to the rich, who by gifts 
to politicians have bought all the legislation required. The 
need to protect what they have bought maintains compacts 
with the politicians to re-elect them to office, support all 
slated candidates and overthrow the machine's opposers. 
When will the day begin for the poor man to have his say 
and representation? 

"If the rich classes form trusts and the political classes 
form trusts to dispose of legislation and public places to 
suit themselves alone, and to manage public affairs inde- 
pendent of the people, the instincts of the poor will prompt 
them some day to rise up and make short work of any party 
that tolerates such a misdirection of its forces. 

"Parties and institutions are tested. Their value ceases, 
and they fall when tried at their worth. 

MAKERS OF BLACK HISTORY. 

"New maps are making in these war days for the United 
States. The Senate and its members are nmking history. 
The Pennsylvania Legislature last winter wrote history in 
large black letters that the people have only now begun to 
read. 

"Quay's Legislature of 1897, with its drafts on the Treas- 
ury, was a draft on the future, payable with interest twelve 
months from date. 

"Defeat cannot but be the stepping-stone to something 
better, for there can be nothing worse than the perfidy and 



IN GENERAL REEDEWS HOME. I75 

treachery of those whose broken oaths are recorded every 
day last winter with their votes in the Legislature. 

"Emerson says of no use are the men who study to do 
exactly as was done before, who can never understand that 
to-day is a new day. We want men now who can open their 
eyes wider than the narrow breadth of party service at the 
primaries and polls; who can see that the State needs to 
advance its education and contentment — men who can see 
all around and take a step forward. 

"I take leave of you with the fervent hope that we shall 
not be driven upon the rock of stubborness, and that we 
shall find a safe harbor in good counsels and good nomina- 
tions of men that can be depended on to devote themselves 
to government wholly free from the domination of the un- 
trustworthy machine of Quay, Andrews, Keeder & Co. 

THE VAN VALKENBERG CASE. 

"I am not done, as I expected to be. I intended to have 
relieved your patience with the words already spoken, but 
since I have left home, and on the eve of entering this 
meeting, I had put into my hands a pamphlet, issued under 
the title of a phrase in my first speech at Lancaster, 'Com- 
mercialism in Politics.^ I am not willing to postpone for 
even a single hour the engagement with the enemy who 
has again raised the black and threatening flag of falsehood. 
Politicians in Pennsylvania are too busy to go to Cuba. The 
pamphlet reprints, with comments, the arrest and hearing 
before the Justice of the Peace, and settlement, of the E. 
A. Van Valkenberg case. It is all paraded in detail, though 
the prosecutor settled it. 

"The pamphlet declares that the Governor, in the interests 
of the machine, entered into a plot emplojdng detectives, 
one of whom became a convict and was imprisoned in New 
York State while the Van Valkenberg case was going on, 
and that Mr. "Weiss, of your county, and Mr. Mackey, of 
Lackawanna, of repute certainly superior to these hired de- 
tectives, were bribed by Mr. Van Valkenberg in my interest. 
Both Mr. Weiss and Mr. Mackey publicly avowed that no 
such bribing took place. As against their statements you 



176 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

are asked to take the statements of these paid detectives of 
a political machine, all-powerful in Pennsylvania, and well 
known not to be above the defamation of character. The 
charges made were all flatly denied under oath by E. A. Van 
Valkenberg, the accused, who was dragged in the dead of 
night into a Court friendly to his prosecution by the political 
machine, so far as the District Attorney and his clerks were 
concerned. Circumstantial evidence is reported of a farcical 
hearing where a prompter stood behind the witness and read 
certain written statements now published, made by a hired 
assassin of character, whose employer, also testifying soon 
after, was put behind the prison bars in New York State. 

AN INFAMOUS BUSINESS. 

"Stripped of the dramatic, this is all the case, except what 
is absolutely mere distortion of truth. A half truth is often 
worse than an out-and-out lie. An unknown man called on 
me with a letter from a reputable citizen from Altoona, in- 
troducing him as Tillard. That letter, the writer claims, 
was gotten from him by deception. 

"The man who now confesses that he came to assassinate 
me and my friends, by direction of the Quay-Andrews-Eeeder 
machine, asked for information about the campaign, and I 
referred him to the Committee at the Bourse, and men- 
tioned names of several individuals. I believe that Mr. Van 
Valkenberg was out of town at the time he called. Tillard 
now claims that I then employed him, an unknown person, 
to go out and buy votes for me. He knows, and so does 
everybody else know, that he begins his infamous business 
with a lie in his mouth. Whatever service he entered upon 
professedly in my behalf was of his own. proffer, and whoever 
trusted him with money for his expenses and to loan, as I 
am told, to an individual, persecuted because of his interest 
in my campaign, simply fell into a dastardly trap set by 
Reeder and others whose names are in my possession. 

"I never gave the man a dollar to buy a vote for me, and 
never authorized, directly or indirectly, or winked at the 
purchase of a vote for me, not even by the bribing of a man 
with an appointment of a place in my store, which I could 



IN GENERAL REEDEK'IS HOME. 177 

easily have done, and was frequently appealed to do. Mr. 
Weiss was known to my committee to be against me, and 
Mr. Tillard, who wanted to see him in my behalf, was dis- 
tinctly directed not to do so, as I am informed, and if "Tillard 
took money and marked it as bribe money he did so of Mis 
own volition, to carry out his nefarious bargaining with his 
employer. 

"There is not now, and nev^ has been, any concealment 
of the fact that the committee representing me did assist 
unelected men, who had declared their intention to support 
me, by aiding them in strictly legitimate expenses. That 
man does not live who can truthfully say that I hired a man 
or permitted a living being to pay any money in the Sena- 
torial election campaign as bribes, and if any man was so 
paid, which I do not believe, it was, and is, and always will 
be, without my consent and against my instructions. 

"As regards the statement that an effort was made un- 
successfully to subpoena me as a witness, it is known that 
two drunken men once failed to get access to my office, and 
who may have had a legal paper; but it is absurd and untrue 
to say I could not be subpoened. Moreover, I am ready to 
make an affidavit that I returned from Europe from the 
bedside of a sick child last October solely to be within reach 
if I was wanted for the service of the supoena upon me in 
Mr. Van Valkenberg's expected trial. I desire to distinctly 
state that I never was consulted about the settlement of 
the case, did not know it was to be settled, never paid a 
dollar or any other sum personally or instructed any other 
person to pay any money for me for its settlement; and, 
further, I am reliably informed that no money was paid 
on my behalf by any one in settlement of the Van Valken- 
berg case, and I solemnly declare that I do not know where 
the money came from that settled it. It was a sincere dis- 
appointment to me personally that the case was ever settled 
without trial. 

HOLDS A CONFESSION. 

"I have further to add that the arrest of Van Valkenberg 
and the charges against him were solely the work of politi- 



178 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

cians connected with the Quay-Eeeder ring, and that the 
confession of one of the actual conspirators is now in my 
possession. The publication of the unsigned anonymous 
pamphlet is a part of the political game of the hard-pressed 
machine, which stops at nothing to gain its ends. 

"John S. Hopkins, the cashier of the People's Bank, was 
driven to a suicide's grave by the politicians he served. He 
went down with a pistol ii^^^s one hand because of a sad 
truth told by himself as he looked into a grave, and in the 
piteous tear-stained letter he left to his widow and fatherless 
children, when he said that the other hand ^is in the lion's 
mouth, I cannot get it out, and to me death is preferable.' 

"I have not got my hand in the lion's mouth, and please 
God I live to fight them." 



IF WANAMAKER WERE GOVERNOR! 



What he would do to Reform the Party and the Politics 

of the State — A declaration which every Voter 

should read as it is the stamp of the 

man — No Quay tool or boss or 

candidate ever made such 

a declaration — or could. 

The People would 

get their 

Rights. 



One of the most remarkable and interesting speeches of Ris 
remarkable campaign was delivered by Hon. John Wana- 
maker during a day's tour in Northampton county on May 
14. He told what he would do were he elected Governor, as 
follows: 

"I have made more than sixty speeches since the opening 
of this campaign against the system of political corruption 
that is sapping the strength and virtue from the EepubHcan 
party in Pennsylvania, and threatening its very existence. 
Every speech has embodied some new thought, and has ana- 
lyzed some new feature of Quayism. The versatility of the 
speeches has attracted some attention, which the people mis- 



IF WANAMAKER WERE GOVERNOR. 179 

takenly credit to the author, instead of to the proper source — 
which is the Quay machine — that has been making an almost 
limitless amount of ammunition. The Quay machine has 
made the powder and halls, and has loaded the guns; it only 
requires the man with a match to fire them off. The analysis 
of the Quay machine is like the chambers of scientific investi- 
gation — the further you explore, the more new avenues open 
up before you, and the larger the store of hidden secrets you 
gather. And if any*%ne believes that Wanamaker is exhaust- 
ing this subject, they are mistaken, for I will promise you 
that I have new data enough at hand to continue the same 
character of speeches almost indefinitely. 

"It is an easy matter to criticise governmental policies, but 
it is difficult to remedy their defects. Any man can say your 
work is not perfectly done, but any man cannot improve upon 
your work. I have become so absorbed in digging out and 
bringing to light car loads of abuses and train loads of wrongs 
that are being dumped upon the people of Pennsylvania, that 
I begin to feel that I have become a sort of chronic critic. 
I will, for to-night, desert the field of corruption hunting 
and discovering, and, from the standpoint of a plain business 
man, talk to you about remedies. 

MR. WANAMAKER'S PLEDGES. 

"That some one may be made responsible for the sugges- 
tions I make, and for the radical change of policies I advo- 
cate, I will preface the discussion by pledging you that if I 
were to be chosen Governor of Pennsylvania I would inau- 
gurate the following changes and business reforms: 

"I would agree to give the best trust company's security 
obtainable, and guarantee that every dollar of the State mo- 
ney should earn at least 2 J per cent, interest, and that every 
cent of interest it did earn would be paid into the State Trea- 
sury. If, during the four years of my administration there 
should be the same average amount in State banks that there 
has been during the past ten years it would yield to the State 
$200,000, in addition to the $300,000 that the new interest 
bill will now give the State from the same source. In other 



180 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEE. 

words, in one Gubernatorial term I would produce by secured 
loans of the State money to financial institutions a half mil- 
lion of dollars, or enough to build the needed State Capitol. 

"I would ask authority to see if the State could really get 
the large sums of money now in favored banks. I would first 
demand the payment into the State Treasury of every dollar of 
it that could be gotten, and force the collection of the bal- 
ance, and would redeposit it only in institutions offering the 
best security and paying the best price. I would compel the 
prompt payment of all taxes and obligations due the State 
from corporations. 

WOULD PAY THE SCHOOL MONEYS. 

"I would pay the public school moneys to school districts 
when they are due. This would cost the State nothing, and 
would save the school districts hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars interest. The $3,500,000 of school money withheld from 
school districts from June 1, 1897, to January 1, 1898, only 
seven months, at 6 per cent, interest, the rate the school dis- 
tricts are obliged to pay for the equivalent of this money to 
run their schools, took from the taxpayers $122,500. It is a 
pretty round sum for the taxpayers in times like these to 
allow the Quay machine to take and be cheerful about it all. 
I want you all to make a note of these figures; they are mat- 
ters of record. 

"I would ask the Legislature to give me authority to com- 
pel the State Treasurer to return to the counties at once their 
share of the personal property tax. The machine passed law 
compels counties which are entitled to 75 pei cent, of the 
personal tax for county purposes, to pay the entire tax into 
the State Treasury. Instead of the State Treasurer deducting 
S5 per cent, the State's share, and returning the balance to 
the counties to which it belongs, he withholds the entire 
amount for months for the use of the machine. In rural coun- 
ties you are compelled to pay your personal tax before a given 
date or pay a 10 per cent, penalty. 

"This same money that is forced from you is sent to the 
Treasurer. The State Treasurer keeps your county's share 



IF WANAMAKER WERE GOVERNOR. 181 

for months for the benefit of favored politicians. In the 
meantime your County Commissioners are obliged to pay in- 
terest for money to take the place of that which is being with- 
held from your county. Thus you are doubly taxed. First, 
to raise the money to pay into the State Treasury; second, 
to allow the Quay machine to use your money after it is due. 

"I have found it impossible to get at the State Treasurer's 
books to ascertain what the loss is each year from this source 
to the taxpayers, but it is enormous, and far larger than the 
loss from withheld school moneys. 

"I would ask authority to compel the proper itemization 
of bills and accounts paid by the State, and would not pay 
the dishonest charges of favored contractors because they 
might happen to have a political pull. 

"I would stop the general appropriation bill being made 
an omnibus to carry hundreds of thousands of dollars of il- 
legal machine items that could never be passed as separate 
bills, and would not allow it to be held back until the last 
hour of the session, so the school appropriation, which it car- 
ries, could be used as a threatening club to drive through 
other iniquitous items. 

'^I would institute a general house-cleaning throughout the 
different departments. I would carefully investigate the State 
printing contracts and the manner in which the work is done, 
and the prices paid. I would just now try to ascertain if cer- 
tain officials, high in party management, who pass upon these 
bills for taxpayers, are not participants in the profits of said 
contracts. 

"I would turn the light into every nook and corner of the 
Department of Public Grounds and Buildings, and learn why 
the expenditures have so increased, and why the cloud of sus- 
picion always surrounds that department. 

WOULD MAKE INVESTIGATIONS. 

"I would ask for authority co have an expert examination 
of the State Treasury Department, together with the books 
of all State Treasurers for the past twenty years, with a view 
to both unearthing the gross irregularities that are known 



182 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

to exist and also that I might cause suit to be brought against 
those who have converted the earnings of the State money 
to their own use, for the law provides that money so taken 
can be recovered at any time afterward, and that such thefts 
never outlaw. I would subpoena every bank official and the 
books and papers of all banks that have had State deposits 
to furnish me with the necessary evidence. 

'^If all money that has been misappropriated from this one 
source by machine officials could be recovered it would be 
sufficient to build two new State capitols. 

"No exorbitant election contest bills would receive my ap- 
proval, and only lawful pay-rolls would be paid, unless passed 
over my head. From these two sources from $50,000 to $75,- 
000 would be saved every year. 

"Political supernumeraries and machine camp followers 
would cease to be pensioners upon the taxpayers' bounty. 

"I would use every effort to force shorter sessions of the 
Legislature — 100 days at the longest. This would save $200,- 
000 at each session. 

"Faithfulness and capability, instead of rascality and in- 
competency, would be my standard for appointments and pro- 
motions. 

"The great State of Pennsylvania, an empire in itself, with 
boundless resources, and almost countless wealth, should 
blush to acknowledge that she turns a deaf ear to the cries 
of charity, while she allows politicians to steal these unfortu- 
nates' shares. 

HELP FOR STATE INSTITUTIONS. 

"Necessary State expenditures must be met; after them 
come charities. I would see that the overcrowded and un- 
healthful condition of State charitable institutions should 
immediately be remedied. The thousands of poor, unfortu- 
nate insane who are now crowded into stone corridors, where 
they sleep upon floors or cots, would be relieved as fast as 
carpenters and bricklayers could provide new buildings. 

"I would never consent to the reduction of the public 
school appropriation, but would favor still larger appropria- 
tions as fast as the State could afford it. 



IF WANAMAKER WERE GOVERNOR. 183 

"I would favor assisting private charities and educational 
institutions which bestow general benefits to the State. 

"I would favor the building of a new State Capitol, in strict 
accordance with the recommendations of the Legislature. 

"I would oppose with all my power any law to place oleo- 
margarine on any kind of a footing with pure butter. 

"I would ask the Legislature to drive railroad and corpora- 
tion lobbyists out of the legislative halls, and to stop the 
wholesale debauchery by the use of free passes. 

"I would veto every appropriation bill passed by one man 
in Washington over the heads of the appropriation com- 
mittee. 

"I would favor a tax on beer and remunerative investments 
to relieve the land of the farmer. Beer is the most legitimate 
subject of taxation that we have to-day with its rapidly in- 
creasing business and piling up profits. A larger part of this 
product is paid for with bread money of the poor. Buyers 
of beer become paupers — paupers become a burden on the 
State. The more beer that is sold the more paupers are made 
for the State to suppori:, and it is but fair that the brewer 
should take care of his own victims. 

"Before one dollar more of tax is placed upon the people, 
I would favor the taxing of railroad rolling stock, telegraph 
and telephone poles, pipe lines and the profits of great enter- 
prises. 

"I would favor stringent laws against pools and trusts, to 
prevent interference with natural busineps or the enhance- 
ment of the price of staple commodities beyond a legitimate 
profit limit. 

"I believe one of the greatest economic questions that com- 
ing Legislatures will be called upon to meet is that of good 
roads. I believe the State can secure good roads without in- 
creased taxation out of the savings from extravagant admin- 
istration, and thereby serve the urgent and deserved demands 
of the wheelmen, advance the value of farm lands, open up 
sections of the State to increased settlement and facilitate 
transportation. 



184 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"I favor the reduction of taxation, and believe that the 
honest and economical conduct of the State's business would 
give ample to schools and charities, and save the State be- 
tween one and one and a half million dollars annually. A 
proper and intelligent equalization of taxation will go far to 
solve the controversy between capital and labor, and yield 
the wage-earner bread instead of bullets. It would aid to 
promote prosperity, happiness and patriotism. 

A REPLY TO CANDIDATE STONE. 

"Out of eighty-eight lines of the Philadelphia Times, a 
Democratic newspaper, containing the report of Colonel 
Stone's purported speech at Philipsburg last night, he de- 
votes sixty-six to me personally, giving but twenty-two lines 
to public questions. Practically the speech is a scream against 
Mr. Wanamaker, and most ridiculously occupies the time of 
a reported large audience that came together to discuss public 
affairs. Not a single item made against the Legislature and 
the Quay- Andrews machine seems to have been taken up, 
and no attempt made to answer any of the charges that sus- 
tain the argument that he ought not to be elected Governor. 

"He apologizes for coming to the people and claims that it 
is my fault that public meetings are being held. He also 
states that it is all waste time, which is a confession that the 
matter of elections is a matter of the machine, and that the 
people are not to be taken into consideration. He then en- 
ters up an insult against the newspapers of Philadelphia and 
Pittsburg for sending at their own expense their representa- 
tives to measure the height and breadth and depth of the 
anti-Quay movement, and claims that these men, who have 
never been asked to write a speech for me or paid a cent by 
me — ^have prepared my speeches. 

QUAY FURNISHED WANAMAKER WITH FACTS. 

"I do not know a living man who ever prepared a speech 
for me, and if Colonel Stone will see the men that he refers 
to, and will get them to prepare such speeches as I have been 
making, I will be grateful to him and pay all the bills, be- 



IF WANAMAKER WERE GOVERNOR. ^35 

cause it will enable me to make double the addresses, which 
I would be willing to do and could very easily do if I had 
some one to prepare them. This very weak statement of Col- 
nel Stone's, like many others of the machine people, may ac- 
count for the confession he makes that he has lost his busi- 
ness as a lawyer, and which he states perhaps as a reason why 
he should be given the oiFice of Governor. I think the un- 
disputed fact that Colonel Stone charged a $10,000 fee to the 
State for collecting $2,400 is quite enough to show how he 
has lost his legal business. 

"I dictated this while the meeting at Bangor was organiz- 
ing, with the hall filled, at 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, 
and enough people said to be outside to fill another hall, to 
set Colonel Stone's mind at rest by the information which I 
am surprised he has not had. I will tell him who writes my 
speeches. It is Mr. Quay himself. Through his acts and the 
acts of his obedient servants at Hanisburg last winter every- 
thing I say he prepared for me himself, and it is a matter 
of record, accessible to Mr. Stone. Mr. Stone states that he 
wants to be governor, which, of course, everybody knows, 
but he ~does not wish it half as bad as Mr. Quay wants it for 
him, and not one-fourth as bad as Mr. Andrews wants it for 
him. The fact is that Andrews is supposed to have some 
mysterious influence by which he conceals all this from Mr. 
Stone, and that Mr. Quay and Mr. Andrews have dropped 
out of Pennsylvania politics. How can any one credit this 
statement, and the further statement that Colonel Stone does 
not know anjrthing about the last Legislature, which he ig- 
nores. How can a man dealing in such trifling talk be com- 
petent for Governor?" 



186 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

QUAY'S KITCHEN CABINET. 



Who compose it and how they hold Sunday Sessions 

by the seashore — Frank Reeder's appeals for 

vindication — How William H. Andrews 

of Lexow^ fame got his seat in the 

Legislature — The Builder of the 

New Capitol in the Ring. 



The Sunday session of Quay's kitchen cabinet of office- 
holders and hangers-on at Avalon, N. J., on the Sabbath pre- 
ceding the night of May 19th, when Mr. Wanamaker spoke 
at Mt. Union, closing a day's wonderful campaigning in Hun- 
tingdon, furnished Mr. Wanamaker with an opportunity to 
describe its interesting members as follows: 

"I believe it would be better for a great party to go down 
than to permit a few thousand office-holders, by virtue of 
patronage control, to become absolute rulers of six millions 
of people who are practically beyond any power to intervene. 
When neither protest, entreaty, divisions nor respectful de- 
mands avail, it is not likely that six million taxpayers will idly 
retreat before six hundred or six thousand of their servants, 
paid with taxpayers' money. 

"Last Sunday the House of Lords of office-holders raised 
the flag of their Provisional Government for Pennsylvania 
from 1899 to 1903, notwithstanding the reasonable, persist- 
ent, proper and intense protest of the people for one hundred 
days past. 

"The convention to nominate a Governor for the next four 
years for Pennsylvania met last Sunday. The session was 
held at Avalon, at the house of Mr. Becker, State Senator, 
author of the Becker bill, which intended to destroy the ef- 
fectiveness of the provisions of the Bullitt bill. There were 
six persons present, convened by the boss — United States 
Senator Quay, State Senator Durham, State Chairman John 
P. Elkin, deposed from the Attorney General's office; Col- 
lector of the Port Wesley Thomas, State Senator Becker, Al- 
len B. Eorke, contractor for the new Capitol and proposed 
candidate for Mayor. 



QUAY'S KITCHEN CABINET. 187 

"These six men, who toil not, neither do they spin^ all office 
holders except the contractor of the Capitol, held the conven- 
tion and put through the slate. It robhed W. A. Stone of the 
disguise he was traveling under as late as Saturday night last, 
by declaring him the candidate of the Kepublican party. On 
June 2, 362 men are to meet together in Pennsylvania, at 
great expense, to ratify this Sunday convention for Pennsyl- 
vania's Governor made in New Jersey. 

SLATE MAKERS' SUNDAY SCHEMES. 

"This great and powerful State must surrender to the Sun- 
day slate-makers who care nothing for the people's rights 
or wishes. When June 2 comes the 362 are commanded to 
get down on their knees and worship the Quay image in Stone 
— set up by the chairman of the State committee, under boss 
orders. Did you suppose that the chairman of a State com- 
mittee had a right to pick out the man the convention must 
nominate? 

"But enough of this Sunday feast and its skeleton of the 
Eepublican party, once strong, united, unconquerable. The 
cup of its wrong-doing is nearly full — ^the world has moved 
on, and it sees not, neither will it hear. Better if on that 
Sunday they had read and thought of ancient Israel, when 
David waxed stronger and stronger, and Saul waxed weaker 
and weaker. Then they might have passed in their high-hand- 
ed disfranchisement of the people and their electors to the 
June convention. 

"A great popular verdict of condemnation of the discredit- 
able tactics of party rule must follow as sure as spring, sum- 
mer and autumn follow winter. He who will not answer to 
the rudder must answer to the rocks, is an old proverb. Were 
office holders generally taxpayers things would be different. 
As they ride over Pennsylvania they say: *A11 these acres 
have been presented to us to raise taxes upon.' The wheat 
crop and the com crop and the tobacco crop greatly vary, 
and sometimes are very poor, but the crop of taxes never 
varies except to increase, and this makes a politician's life one 
long, loud laugh. 



188 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER, 

REEDER AND HIS VANISHED CAREER. 

"Day before yesterday Northampton county, the heretofore 
stronghold of Quay and Reedism, spoke through her Repub- 
lican primaries, and I bring to the people of Huntingdon 
county to-night her message of warning to the bosses who are 
planning to place a destroying mine under the old Republi- 
can ship of Pennsylvania. 

Since 1858 the Reeder dynasty has ruled supreme in North- 
ampton county. The distribution of Federal offices and offi- 
cial favors by the Reeders for all those years, through the 
grace of the Cameron-Quay- Andrews machine, has builded 
in Northampton county a political despotism that has been 
absolute until yesterday. It is the first time the county has 
ever been invaded and the dictatorship of Frank Reeder dis- 
puted. 

"Northampton county is the home of great corporations 
that are the recipients of large favors from the Quay machine. 
They are all bound to stand by Reeder. There is not an anti- 
Quaj-Reeder Republican paper in the county. There was 
no anti-Reeder-Quay organization in the county, but in spite 
of all I am informed that a change of less than forty votes 
would have carried the county against the Reeder-Quay out- 
fit. 

"In Easton, the home of Reeder, where he begged for vin- 
dication, a change of seven individual votes would have given 
the Anti-Reeder people one-half of the delegates. In South 
Easton the assistant superintendent of a railroad company, 
who, it is said, has eighty per cent, of the Republican voters 
of the district under him, and who is a Reeder lieutenant, 
stood inside the voting room, and saw every man deposit his 
vote, yet the ward gave but two majority for Reeder and 
Quay. 

"I received a message before I left Philadelphia which said 
that in the slate regions, where our party made speeches last 
Saturday, and which has heretofore been a Reeder strong- 
hold, the anti-Reeder-Quay people elected forty-two out of 
the forty-five county delegates by winning every district in 
which a contest was made. This is the strongly Republican 



QUAY'S KITCHEN CABINET. I39 

end of the county, and the voting population is comprised 
almost wholly of workingmen, many of whom until last Sat- 
urday knew but little of the true meaning of Eeeder and 
Quayism. 

"Frank Eeeder, to save the fight, became a candidate for 
Governor. Local pride was appealed to — corporations put on 
the screws — Reeder begged for votes for vindication and only 
won by a very slight margin. These are the kind of victories 
the machine is winning this year throughout the State. It 
is the kind of victories that forebode doom and disaster to 
the machine when the people get a chance to strike. There 
is sentiment with the people, if not organization, and when 
you analyze the vote of the county that which seems a vic- 
tory for the Quay machine is clear evidence of defeat. It is 
notable that Bethlehem, where the Behlehem Iron Company 
holds sway, and where no public meeting could be arranged 
to get the truth of this political situation before the people, 
the vote was solid for the Quay-Eeeder machine. Great is 
the power of the armor contractors who sell Eussia American- 
made armor at $249 per ton, and would at the same time 
charge their own tariff-protected country nearly double, or 
$525 per ton. 

"Is it any wonder that the tariff cause suffers from such 
frightful arguments so conspicuously presented against it? 

"Were I a politician and after office I might think it bad 
politics for me personally to make these statements, losing 
me the good will of these corporations, but I am not asking 
any favors except for the public good. 

LEGISLATIVE ROLL CALLS ARE COOKED. 

"I have discussed in other speeches the many different ways 
that machine legislation is driven through the Legislature. 
The methods of intimidation, the uses of money, the promise 
of office, the pressure from great corporations, the wholesale 
distribution of passes and the law-6vading rules of legislative 
practices are further supplemented by the boldest and most 
flagrant violations of the law, by certain officers of the Legis- 
ture who keep the record of roll calls. 



190 SPEECHES OF HON, JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

"When first my attention was called to this matter it seem- 
ed to me so monstrous that I was loath to believe it, but a 
careful inquiry and examination has proved its entire cor- 
rectness, and the statements I make touching this matter are 
susceptible of the fullest proof. Many and very important 
laws are to-day upon the statute books of Pennsylvania that 
are said to have never received the constitutional majority 
of votes in the Legislature, but which were passed by being 
deliberately counted in by the clerks of the House or Senate. 

"Millions of your money is appropriated every session by 
marking up the votes of members who are not present during 
roll call. The names of many members are recorded as hav- 
ing voted on scores of appropriation bills that have passed, 
by just the constitutional majority, or at least slender margins 
who were absent at the time the bills were considered, and 
who did not respond to the roll call. The marking up and 
padding of roll calls on important bills is openly and boldly 
done. It requires the most constant vigilance on the part of 
anti-machine men to see that the roll calls are kept correct 
during the session of the Legislature. 

HOW ANDREWS GOT HIS SEAT. 

"The closing days and particularly the last night of the 
session, when members have grown weary and indifferent by 
overwork, and when legislation is rushed through with dan- 
gerous and almost criminal haste, then it is that the rankest 
kind of fraud is attempted or perpetrated. Senator William 
H. Andrews, late of Crawford county, who just now is steer- 
ing the State political machine towards the W. A. Stone 
rapids, would probably never have profaned the halls of the 
State Senate but for a most shameless fraud alleged to have 
been committed by a clerk under the direction of the machine 
in making up the legislative rolls. Andrews was defeated 
for the Legislature, and his opponent given a certificate of 
election which legally entitled his name to be placed upon 
the roll, instead of that of Andrews. But a chief clerk, by 
orders, it is stated, from Senator Quay, in making up the roll 
during an open session of the House, deliberately substituted 
the name of Andrews for that of his opponent. 



QUAT8 KITCHEN CABINET. 191 

"Under the law the man who holds the certificate of elec- 
tion is entitled to his seat as a member of the Legislature 
until the election contest is decided, but in this case the man 
holding the regular credentials was deprived of his seat to 
make room for Andrews, through the unlawful act of a ma- 
chine-controlled clerk, who illegally made up the roll. Thus 
a man who, according to returns was elected a member of the 
Legislature by the people, and who is said to have held pro- 
per credentials, was never allowed to sit a day in the Legis- 
lature! The report of the elections committee, under the 
control of Quay and Andrews, was only a matter of form, 
and of course Andrews was permitted to retain his seat. 

THE NOTORIOUS POOL BILL. 

"If roll calls are questioned and the names of members who 
were not present are found to be recorded as having voted, it 
has been held that the roll call can only be corrected by the 
personal statement of the member whose vote is thus question- 
ed, no matter if it is found that this one disputed vote is ne- 
cessary to make the constitutional majority. In this manner 
a roll may be padded and though the Legislature has full 
knowledge of the fact, it is unable to correct it. The bill can 
be sent immediately to a machine controlled Governor, who 
can sign it and it becomes a law and can in no way be affected, 
though later a dozen members might testify they had not 
voted. 

"During the last night of the last session an effort was 
made to pass the notorious pool bill. After the roll had been 
called. Representative Moore, of Chester, demanded a read- 
ing of the roll. The chief clerk tried to evade it; the demand 
for a reading was renewed, and again it was refused. Finally 
the Chief Clerk was forced to read the roll, when it was dis- 
covered that several members who were absent were recorded 
as having voted. The climax was reached when the name of 
Representative Sloan, of Washington county, who it was 
stated was at that time in Denver, Col., was read as having 
voted for the bill. His name is still recorded as having voted 
on the pool bill in the affirmative, Leg. Rec.^ p 3708. And 



192 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

on the same day, July 1, 1897, Re is recorded as having voted 
for the Grant monument junketing trip expense bill, Leg. 
Rec, p. 3714, and also for the machine revenue bill. Leg. 
Rec, p. 3712. 

THE SALE OF POST OFFICES. 

"I think it proper to add a few words about the barter and 
sale of post offices in this Commonwealth, which has been dis- 
cussed very generally by the public. On the 10th of this 
month I received the following letter, not mailed to me until 
three days after it was published in the newspapers through- 
out the State: 

" 'Washington, D. C, May 6. 
" 'Hon. John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" 'Dear Sir: The statement made by you coneeming the 
sale or offering for sale, of the appointment of postmaster at 
Tyrone, and my acceptance of, or agreement to accept, $3,000, 
or any other sum of money for said office, as published in the 
Philadelphia Press and Somerset Standard, is absolutely and 
unqualifiedly false. It has no foundation in truth or in fact. 
I respectfully demand that you give this denial the same pub- 
licity that you have given your statements, and I request the 
name of your authority that I may give him an opportunity 
to answer in court. Respectfully yours, 

J. D. HICKS.' 

"Yesterday I mailed the following reply, which I put into 
this speech in order to give it the widest possible publicity: 



a ( 



" 'May 18, 1898. 
Hon. Josiah D. Hicks, House of Representatives, Wash- 
ington, D. C: 
" 'My Dear Sir: Referring to your letter of the 6th instant, 
I have to say that on the 28th of April last, at West Chester, 
I made the following general statement: 

" 'To what depth of political infamy has the Quay control 
of Pennsylvania reached wh»n post offices are practically put 
up at a form of auction and knocked down to the political 



QUAY'S KITCHEN CABINET. I93 

heeler who can pay the largest sum for the privilege of be- 
coming postmaster, and who at the same time is capable of 
carrying the most voters for Quay! It is a notorious fact that 
at least in two Congressional districts it is boldly asserted 
and easily proven that post offices are offered for sale and have 
been sold. And these offices are in districts whose members 
of Congress are Quay's warmest supporters, and they look 
to him to secure the offices for the men to whom they are 
sold/ 

"Listen to this: 



« n 



"'April 23, 1898. 
'Dear Sir: I have filed my application with the Post- 
master General for the post office at T , but it is said that 

our Congressman is holding it for $3,000. Now I do not think 
it right to buy the office and have not the money to do so, 
and write asking for your aid in the matter. Can you give 
me any, or suggest any course that will help me in securing 
it? If you can, I will be greatly obliged. Yours, etc., 



"What do you think of this, my friends, for political in- 
famy? Of what value is your opinion, or your indorsement 
in the selection of postmaster? The post offices of Pennsyl- 
vania are sold like farm produce. 

"Your letter apparently applies the above statements to 
yourself. 

"Whatever is my responsibiUty for the foregoing state- 
ments I am ready to meet, and my attorney, G. Harry Davis, 
Esq., 608 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, will act for me. With 
respect, 



t<€ 



"It will do no harm to say in this connection I have other 
information on this subject that will be forthcoming at the 
proper time. This is a sample, written by a reputable and 
reliable citizen: 



194 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

" 'Hon. John Wanamaker, Philadelphia. 

" 'Dear Sir: I see * * * the sale of post office in his dis- 
trict. If you can find one . I think at , Pa., who 

was an applicant for postmaster at county, Pa., last * * 

he can give you some positive information. Almost any one 

in can give you his address. He was formerly a 

in . Yours. 

"Here is another from entirely reliable people: 



-, Pa., May 13, 1898. 



'' 'It is needless for you to go to county to find out 

anything about selling post offices and other offices. ac- 
cused Congressman of selling post offices last . I 

understand all the offices here were promised when 

was a candidate for renomination. The corruption in this 
county is so bad and our party here so rotten that it is a dis- 
grace to civilization. Truthfulness, honesty and sobriety are 
lost for the sake of office. If the people are willing to uphold 
this corruption and dishonesty, God save the country. Con- 
gressman must be an angel to our Congressman . 

I have been a Eepublican since 1860, but our party now stinks 
in the nostrils of any decent man. Yours very truly.' 



"Fellow-countrymen, so patient to hear and so willing to 
be right, this is the time to call out our forces to fight these 
foes whose long course in political debasement has left them 
shameless. 

"Political speculations in the Cuban war policies and spec- 
ulations in post offices go hand in hand. With our facts ex- 
actly right, the power over conditions and circumstances 
ought to be complete.'' 



$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE B08P1TAL. 195 

$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE HOSPITAL. 



The Sick and the Insane of the State at Quay's Mercy. 

Asylums and Hospitals " Held Up " at his nod. 

How honest Legislators are forced to Vote 

as the Machine directs — The Senate 

at Quay's bidding voted $io,ooo 

to a Hospital that never 

existed. 



The way in which Quay holds a club over every hospital 
sick bed and insane asylum inmate was illustrated by Mr. 
Wanamaker in his speech before a great audience at Phoenix- 
ville on May 27th. This is what he said: 

"Pennsylvania appropriates more than $24,000,000 every 
two years for the running expenses of the State government, 
the public schools and charities. Every dollar of the vast 
expenditure must pass before the appropriation committees 
of the Senate and House. These committees are always 
Quay political organizations. Membership is dictated by 
Senator Quay himself, and their known subserviency to his 
will is responsible for the selection of a majority of both 
committees each session. Members are impressed and edu- 
cated in manifold ways to understand that the $24,000,000 
of public moneys really belong to Senator Quay; that the 
appropriations to schools, hospitals, penal institutions and 
asylums must be regarded as the personal gifts of Senator 
Quay, and every gift of public moneys must therefore be 
made to yield returns to his political machine. 

"While not wishing to reflect personally or individually 
upon the members of the committee it can be said that ap- 
propriations are made as much with the view of aiding the 
Quay machine as from a desire to serve the cause of hu- 
manity. Politics controls the appointment of trustees of 
State institutions, and politics controls the appropriations 
given to State institutions. The needs of overcrowded 
asylums and unhealthy hospitals count as nought against 
the request of the man with a political pull and who can de- 
liver State delegates. 



196 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"The state is compelled by law to take care of State pa- 
tients, and the State is compelled by law to pay all bills, 
yet the same grateful, appreciative and generous loyalty is 
demanded by the officers of these State institutions toward 
the machine for the privilege given them by Senator Quay 
to use the State's money to pay the State's debts. 

"The following figures will give some idea of the mag- 
nitude of this branch of the machine. There are twenty 
educational institutions beside the public schools that re- 
ceive State aid. The aggregate amount, including the pub- 
lic schools, that they will receive in 1898 is $6,831,436. 
Under the machine construction of things this must be con- 
sidered as Senator Quay's personal contribution to the cause 
of education, and must bear just that many dollars' worth 
of Quay results. 

"One hundred and fifteen charitable institutions will re- 
ceive State aid during 1898. The sum they will receive will 
aggregate $843,800. Viewed from a machine standpoint this 
is certainly a princely sum for Senator Quay to spend for 
charity, notwithstanding he has ignored the overcrowded and 
unhealthy condition of so many of these institutions to meet 
the increased expenses for indemnity bonds, mileage grabs 
and junketing trips. 

"Senator Quay's committee will allow $717,700 to be 
given to the support of the indigent insane this year. This 
is $202,620 less than was allowed them in 1897, though the 
number of insane is constantly increasing and their over- 
crowded condition is becoming more aggravated every year. 
The eight penitentiaries and reformatories will be allowed 
$302,583 for 1898, the same sum that was granted in 1897. 

"For miscellaneous expenses $226,720 will be allowed for 
1898. 

HOW CHARITY IS MADE TO PAY. 

"The power the political machine generates from this 
source is almost beyond belief. Hospitals are the most im- 
portant institutions in many legislative districts. The people 
of these districts, who have already given more of their 
labor and money than they can well afford, support men for 



$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE "HOSPITAL. I97 

the Legislature who they believe may be able to secure ap- 
propriations for their hospitals. These members must secure 
the appropriation at all hazards. Their re-election depends 
upon it. These districts are well known to the machine 
managers, and political ^steerers^ are put upon their repre- 
sentatives when they first appear in Harrisburg. They are 
first made to believe that Quay, and Quay alone, can give 
them their appropriation. They are promised a liberal sum 
for their hospital if they will follow the machine blindly. 
If they hesitate their appropriations are threatened. 

"It is made very plain that charity is secondary to politics. 
Their constituents urge them to save the hospital at any 
sacrifice. They pause for a time between being independent, 
and losing their appropriation, or being subservient, and 
thereby aiding charity. The influence of this part of the 
machine cannot be overestimated. To secure aid for the 
most worthy charities within the State more than a score 
^of members are compelled to support every machine measure, 
and the fear that no help will be given institutions, whose 
years of noble work is a part of the history of the State, con- 
trols many more votes. 

$10,000 FOR A BOGUS HOSPITAL. 

"At the last session of the Legislature the committee was 
obliged to refuse actual maintenance for many of the most 
deserving hospitals of the State. Yet this same committee, 
under orders, passed for Senator Coyle, of Schuylkill, a 
Quay lieutenant, an appropriation of $10,000 for the main- 
tenance of the American Hospital Association, of Mahanoy 
township, which, was an imaginary institution of Senator 
Coyle's, without capital, without a building, or without even 
a site upon which to build one. This fraud was fortunately 
discovered by Governor Hastings, who vetoed the nefarious 
scheme. 

"I am informed by an ex-member of the appropriation 
committee that during a recent session of the Legislature 
the appropriation committee, after months of work and the 
unmerciful slashing of meritorious bills, had succeeded in 
making the total amount of appropriations fall within the 



198 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB*^^ 

estimated revenues. Upon the last night that bills could 
be reported from the committee and be passed before ad- 
journment, orders came from Senator Quay that more than 
$500,000 of bills for powerful and rich institutions must be 
passed. These bills had all been considered by the committee 
on their merits and negatived. Upon orders from the "old 
man" they were considered and reported favorably within 
one hour. A prominent Philadelphia business man dared 
not contribute to the Business Men^s League because he was 
a director in the Philadelphia Museum, and he had been 
notified the institution would lose an appropriation that 
upon its merits alone it is entitled to receive. 

"This may be my last political speech before the Repub- 
lican State convention, which will be held at Harrisburg on 
June 2d. The campaign, though filled with arduous labors, 
has grown more interesting and attractive to me every day. 
The explorations of the labyrinths of machine secrets and 
iniquities have fascinated me. I close the speech-making 
for the present with but one regret, viz.: That the time 
has been too short to discuss one-half of the abuses I have 
discovered and the damaging facts I have gathered. I 
promise you I have been saving the choicest morsels for 
dessert, but there have been so many courses that it cannot 
be reached before convention time. The meal may be only 
temporarily interrupted, and perhaps we may be compelled 
to finish it later. 

"It has been said that Wanamaker is a very poor politician, 
and I believe the statement is entirely correct. I became a 
candidate against the advice of my political friends at a 
time when I could not safely count upon the vote of a single 
delegate in the State. 

"When I told the people, and told them honestly, that I 
did not want to be Governor, my political friends said I 
had made an awful blunder. When I made speeches in 
counties that I knew would elect delegates against me my 
political friends said my course was well-nigh suicidal. When 
I criticised laws that unjustly discriminated against the weak 
and in favor of the powerful my political friends said it was 
poor policy. 



$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE HOSPITAL. 199 

"When I said that the corporate trusts of the State were 
usurping others' rights and robbing the people my political 
friends predicted that the corporations would unite and 
crush me. 

■ "When I said that beer was the most legitimate subject 
for taxation my political friends said that brewers would ex- 
pend millions to defeat me. 

NEWSPAPERS WILL NOT SUPPORT QUAY. 

"When I said that the great news channels of the State 
were under Quay censorship my political friends said that 
the newspapers would no longer print my speeches. 

"When I refused to entertain any suggestion of compro- 
mise and declared I would be bound by no deals my political 
friends predicted that I would find myself standing very 
much alone before the end of the canvas. 

"When I struck at every ugly head that I found exposed, 
without fear or favor, my political friends said that poli- 
ticians would become afraid to trust me, and would not dare 
to give me their support. When I showed that under Eepub- 
lican Quay rule the people were paying over one-third too 
much taxes and that any ordinary economical administra- 
tion would save the taxpayers $1,500,000 annually my po- 
litical friends said that my enemies would make the Republi- 
can voters believe I was trying to wreck the Eepublican 
party. My policy has been at almost constant variance with 
my political friends. According, therefore, to modern po- 
litical science and methods, I must have made an awful mess 
of this campaign. 

^But if I have made mistakes that will cost me the votes 
of delegates it is all right. The election of delegates for 
me has been secondary to the real purpose of my campaign. 
I can truthfully say that I cannot tell within twenty-five of 
how many delegates will vote for me in convention. I ac- 
cepted the commission from the hands of the Bourse meet- 
ing, and that commission did not command me to advance 
the political fortunes of Wanamaker, but to try to free Penn- 
sylvania from a reign of political tyranny and help to save 
the Republican party from threatened destruction. 



200 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"If I haye not succeeded in gathering delegates that will 
stand for me in the State Convention I certainly have pre- 
sented startling and uncontroverted facts that will stand 
against Quapsm in the future. I was mustered in to serve 
until June 2, and if the battle is not then won I promise you 
that I shall enlist again, not for time, but until the war is 
ended. 

"In my letter of acceptance of the call of one of the most 
representative, intelligent and practical bodies of men that 
ever met in convention in my State, I said, after mature re- 
flection, that I believed, in view of facts in my possession, 
that the political ring would be restored; that I believed the 
people had determined to act for themselves apart from the 
politicians and intended this very year to resume control of 
the rights vested in them, that had been wrested from them 
and withheld by force and fraud. The experiences in the 
last three or four months of close acquaintance with the 
people, listening to the true-souled patriots who have pa- 
tiently waited for the time to come, satisfies me that the day 
of deliverance has come, and delay to recognize it means dan- 
ger. 

"A sporadic spurt of a faction is never dangerous, and such 
movements are temporary; but this organized resistance to 
bossism has come to stay until the old party returns to its 
old, true principles, or a new party is bom to receive all the 
good that remains of the Lincoln and Blaine planting. 
Bosses, sub-bosses, big bosses, and little bosses, ward bosses, 
county bosses, township bosses, village bosses, post office 
bosses. State bank bosses may as well take notice that all at- 
tempts to hold together the Eepublican party by deceit and 
fraud any longer are futile and will be disastrous in the ex- 
treme. By the twenty years of uncomplaining suffering has 
come to-day to the people a giant's strength to tear out of 
the statute books the laws that have been enacted by political 
partisans to maintain ascendancy and protect the law- 
breakers who have bought and sold State and Federal pa- 
tronage. 

"The extreme gravity of the political situation carries us 
next door to a revolution. A Governor's mansion, with an 



$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE HOSPITAL. 201 

Oliver Cromwell in it, and a Legislature, with clean win- 
dows that the people may look into as they please, is the 
imperative necessity of the hour. Forty days of deluge will 
not wash away this demand of the people. They know that 
Senator Quay by electing his own Governor and Legislature, 
as a matter of course, becomes Senator, controlling for the 
next seven years all the appointments of the President for 
Pennsylvania — all the appointments of the State — ^its law- 
making and law administration, excluding from appointment 
of such Judges and District Attorneys as will not obey his 
interests. The population of the United States being 70,- 
000,000, Pennsylvania having between six and seven mill- 
ions, he has control of the well-being of one-tenth of the 
United States. 

"It is idle to say that it is a faction that raises the com- 
motion that exists from the Delaware to the Allegheny. It 
is not a mushroom of a day. The lightning of righteous 
wrath has struck in every county of our State. 

"It was an unworthy slander on the old fathers and the 
faithful of our party to attribute unworthy motives to the 
four hundred members of the Bourse conference. They, 
much more than a cabal of six on a Sunday, represent the 
true heart of the old Kepublican party. What is a faction? 
Do you know that the Century Standard Dictionary defines 
it as one that seeks, by unscrupulous and subservient 
methods, to gain its own ends? Who dares to say that th« 
Bourse meeting, held in open day, and its deliberations 
shared by scores, was not a respectful, long-pent-up appeal to 
the leaders of the Eepublican party not to drive on to ruin. 
What other methods have the Bourse patriots pursued than 
to disseminate the simple, unvarnished truth, without any 
ends to gain for any individual among those thus remon- 
strating against oppressive wrong? 

"What is it that the dictionary defines a factionist to be 
— 'Active in forming factions and promoting dissensions, 
turbulent, extremely partisan dissensions.' I call upon the 
50,000 people whom I have had the privilege of speaking to 
if I ever indulged in virulence or venom even when unjustly 
attacked by committee^paid newspaper writers or hired trav- 



^02 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

elers sowing poisoning pamphlets filled with falsehood. 
Calmly and fairly I have held up the mirror of the acts of 
the Legislature and the acts of the State Treasurer as man- 
ipulated politically, and I have ever counseled reason and 
reconstruction and not dissension. 

"The Legislature of ^97 is a dead certainty and a living wit- 
ness against the Republican party that there is no getting 
away from. You take one step into it and you are in for 
a long walk if you want to go to the end of as black a chap- 
ter as was ever written in any Staters history — one or two 
instances, is it that you ask? Well, I will try. 

"So many new and important instances of the blighting 
and destroying effects of Quayism that ought to be discussed 
are coming to my attention every day that it is difficult for 
me to determine which to take up first. In previous speeches 
I have analyzed nine distinct parts of the hydra-headed po- 
litical machine that -has prostrated manhood, prostituted 
every branch of the State government, and pillaged the 
people's treasury. To-night I will speak briefly of part 
number ten of the Quay political machine that rules Penn- 
sylvania. 

"Part No. 10 of the machine is the political manipulation 
of the great sums of money given by the State for educa- 
tional, benevolent and charitable purposes. The insolent and 
crushing power that dares to profane the temples of worship, 
that dares to direct its political slaves to pubhcly blaspheme 
God in the streets of a Christian city on the eve of an im- 
portant political convention, that dares to command its crea- 
tures to rob the people of millions of their money, that dares 
place at the head of the Republican organization of Penn- 
sylvania a self-confessed participant in a conspiracy to un- 
lawfully take a large sum of taxpayer's money from the State 
Treasury, at the time he was a State official, sworn to espe- 
cially guard the people's money; that dares to sell favors and 
legislation to corporations against the interest of the State 
and her people, in return for gold with which to purchase 
elections; the power that dares to strike down honest men, 
to assassinate character and defame the honored names of 
defenseless women; that dares to wring the scant earnings 



$10,000 VOTED TO A FAKE HOSPITAL. 203 

from the underpaid miner, the small savings from the over- 
taxed farmer, the bread money from the laborer, and that 
assaults the great public schools of the State and is indif- 
ferent to the needs of the unfortunate insane, whose health 
demands better homes, can only be expected to use the dire 
needs of the victims of accident and disease as political trad- 
ing stock, and the just demands of education and benevo- 
lence as a political club to drive into supporting the machine 
those who feel it a duty to make any sacrifice necessary to 
obtain funds to carry on their good works. 

THINGS FOR QUAY TO, REMEMBER. 

"To-night as we hear far above the turmoil of party strife 
the voice of 70,000,000 exclaiming: "Eemember the Maine,'' 
so I believe I voice the sentiment of a majority of Pennsyl- 
vanians upon this eve of a convention that may either re- 
deem or unify, or disrupt, disorganize and destroy the Re- 
publican party, when I admonish the master to have great 
care in behalf of a long-suffering and outraged people before 
it is too late. I say to Senator Quay: 'Remember the last 
Legislature; remember you were its master; remember you 
could have prevented its shameful acts; remember that the 
people know the responsibility rests upon you; remember 
the people are aroused as never before; remember they know 
that they have lost millions under Quay rule; remember they 
are ready to resent the assault upon the public schools; re- 
member they know that they are paying an unjust share of 
taxes; remember they have shown how $1,500,000 can be 
saved by the application of honest and economical business 
methods; remember that they know your political henchmen 
attempted to loot the State Treasury with your permission; 
remember that they know that you were present when the 
notorious indemnity bond was prepared; remember they 
know that mileage grabs and padded pay rolls were invented 
by the machine to pay political debts; remember they will 
take no chances of being compelled to pay the infamous 
Lexow bill; remember they stand with President McKinley 
and against Cuban bond speculators; remember they know 
the candidate for Governor that has been slated for two 



204 SPEECHES OF EON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

years; remember they know the candidate that is Andrews 
controlled; remember they know the candidate that is cor- 
poration bound; remember the defeat of General James A. 
Beaver; remember the defeat of George Wallace Delameter; 
remember it is commonly mooted that yon have said that you 
want to know how it feels to own a Governor; remember the 
history of wrecked banks and trust companies; remember the 
warning from Ti^^ga county, a former machine stronghold; 
remember that a machine-labeled candidate was cut 1,800 
votes in his native county, where he had no opponent; re- 
member the will of 6,000,000 people should be paramount 
to that of one man; remember that Boss Tweed and John 
Y. McKane were thought invulnerable a few months before 
they went down; remember the parable of the pitcher that 
went to the well once too often, and that it was the last 
straw that broke the cameFs back! And above all that the 
voters of Pennsylvania are not decrepit slaves, but vigorous 
freemen abundantly able to sink any fleet they train their 
guns upon/* 

THE FIGHT TO GO ON. 



Mr. Wanamaker declares that the fight against the 

Quay Machine -will go on until he is driven from power. 

A remarkable Speech the day after the Har- 

risburg Convention — Elect the right 

Men to the Legislature "who 

will do the People's 

Will. 



The day after the forced nomination of William A. Stone 
at Harrisburg, Ex-Postmaster General Wanamaker spoke to 
1,500 people at an open air meeting at Oxford, Chester 
County. Then it was that he appealed to the people to elect 
the right men to represent them at Harrisburg, and de- 
clared that the fight against the Quay machine must still 
go on. He said: 

"It was as a Eepublican I cast my first vote in 1862. I 
never voted any other ticket since. I was a Eepublican when 
I accepted the call of four hundred Eepublicans at the 



TEE FIGHT TO GO ON. 205 

Bourse conference of February 2. I was not a volunteer 
in their service, because I never wanted to be Governor, but 
as a drafted man I loyally took up the flag. I went to the 
convention yesterday as a straight-out Eepublican, and I 
came home from the convention a better and more hopeful 
Republican because of the 164 representatives of the people 
who stood up in convention and were counted against the 
machine. 

"There are two developments of Republicanism in exist- 
ence to-day; the small but strong body of Republicanism of 
the Lincoln, Grant, Blaine and Harrison stripe, and the other 
the latter-day saints of Republicanism that have grown up 
in Pennsylvania under the Cameron-Quay-Andrews dynas- 
ties; a body composed mainly of office-holding politicians and 
their secret and open beneficiaries. It is not of the people 
and for the people or with the people, but dead against the 
people. It is an oath-bound, banded and belted machine, 
pledged to the machine, wholly for the machine and sturdily 
against every idea and every man not with the machine. In 
the presence of these 700 witnesses, in this midday-meeting 
of the cultured, intelligent and important people of Chester 
County, I record myself anew as not being for or with the 
Republican Machine, Limited, limited to Quay-Andrews and 
office-holders and office-seekers only. That such a political 
machine should exist to-day, chartered by the blindness and 
indifference of the people, is in special evidence this morn- 
ing throughout the State from the full accounts given by 
the newspapers and living witnesses of yesterday's perfunct- 
ory proceedings of the convention at Harrisburg. It is a 
slick and sly machine; coyly in hiding behind State com- 
mittees, bought candidates to trick counties to nominate 
favored sons for timely transfer a la Connell, Reeder and 
Cooper, to machine, newspaper manufactured scarecrows, 
farcical primary elections, legislative steering committees, 
piled up promissory political notes, like those in the State 
banks, and printed dynamite planted with fiendish, Turkish 
and Spanish malice by adroit political engineers out of sight, 
like the treacherous mines in Cuban waters to destroy human 
life. 



206 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

STONE-IN-THE-SLOT MACHINE. 

"It is an ingenious machine; it discourses music in the 
air, post office tunes, collectorship solos, State ticket quar- 
tettes, county ticket choruses; it plays on slates, on Sundays 
by the sea. Gubernatorial anthems and culminates in the 
grand spectacular performances of red fire and brass bands 
at Harrisburg, with the brass bands of politics sufficient per- 
haps to hold fast the gouty foot bound people, but which 
cannot make the rank and file of the younger and coming 
party dance either obedience or votes to its old worn out 
airs. 

"It is an automatic machine; you set it for a stone, it 
plays the stone you set it for, and there is certainly a great 
difference in stones. 

"It is also at times a nickel-in-the-slot machine, receiving 
assessments or fees and holding them until the day of ac- 
counting without registering your weight or will, and re- 
fusing to repay the paid in charges. You put in your sub- 
stance, your service or your vote and the machine receives 
it, but is deaf, dumb and blind, especially after the service 
is done or the vote given. One of the nickel-in-the-slot ma- 
chines recently opened in one of the cities was found to 
contain nickels, wire, tacks, hairpins, buttons, buckles, bones, 
nails, sticks, postage stamps, strings, poker checks, railroad 
tickets and stones. 

"When the June 2d Eepublican nickel-in-the-slot nomi- 
nating convention machine is opened in November next it 
may be found to contain a stone that has been a millstone 
for us. 

"I suppose that there will be some people ready to say 
Wanamaker is talking like a disappointed candidate. Kindly 
save your free criticism and unnecesary sympathy, most will- 
ing but unthinking gossiper. I wish you could all have slept 
the dreamless, luxurious sleep I tumbled into last night with 
that convention behind me. One wants to knit up the 
tangled sleeves of care with refreshing sleep to be strong for 
the next duty. 



THE FIGHT TO GO ON. 207 

MR. WANAMAKER EXPLAINS HIS POSITION. 

"I would like to have had the whole of this gorgeous June 
day to roll in the grass and revel with the daisies and butter- 
cups. Where is the man that can say I ever asked him in 
or out of convention to vote for me for Governor? There 
were two men I was hard against for Governor. One was W. 
A. Stone and the other was John Wanamaker. One of them 
wanted it too much, the other didn't want it at all. 

"In the fray preceding the convention I simply did what 
I wanted to do, represent honest Republicans diametrically 
opposed to the machine. At the convention I did exactly 
what I always wanted to do, and had agreed to do, which was 
to withdraw whenever the interests of the Republican party 
could be furthered thereby. I came into the activities of the 
campaign by request of the Bourse meeting. I retired of my 
own option and upon my own judgment, after conference 
with conferrees. It was a double-quick movement when the 
enemy were in battle line, and intended to spike their guns. 
You are entitled to know that it was asserted on the streets 
and in the convention at Harrisburg that Wanamaker could 
not be persuaded to unite on any candidate, but was holding 
out for himself. The fact was, no one ever asked me to unite 
upon either of the old or any new candidate; they could not 
ask me or any one, for the orders had gone out, better be de- 
feated utterly than surrender to the one and only candidate, 
W. A. Stone. 

"By the letter, hastily written while the convention was 
listening to the Star-Spangled Banner of the land of the free 
voter and the home of the brave Republicans, I ^vrote my 
hasty letter, unfinished when the speech nominating me was 
going on, and hurriedly dispatched it to throw down a chal- 
lenge to unite in the nomination of Charles W. Stone, who 
up to almost the assembling of the convention had in the con- 
vention more than enough votes to nominate him. Why they 
did not nominate Charles W. Stone and why his votes are said 
to have been bought away from the plucky hero of Warren 
is no mystery. Let me also say that even at the convention 
hour Charles W. Stone could have been nominated if he had 



208 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

bought back his then missing votes^ and I add further that 
all through the two days preceding the convention I held in 
my pocket a signed letter offering to deliver to me for cash 
a certain number of votes to give me a majority in the con- 
vention for any candidate I wanted. 

"I must not fail to add that the Republican political ma- 
chine is an all-powerful machine; it commands national and 
State leverage; it includes in its running gear steam railroad 
corporations, electric corporations, gas and armor corpora- 
tions, contractors, jury fixers, Council lobbyists and employees 
of city departments who go to conventions and vote and make 
speeches against greenhorn adventurous citizens who think 
it worth while to attend Bourse citizens' meetings. It was 
indeed rather a sorry sight and sound to see and hear a Phila- 
delphia boss as old as the Leeds-Disston-Rowan combine^ — in- 
deed, the oldest of them — slapping in the face four hundred 
business men whose candidate was in order in carrying out 
their instructions. Pity a resolution had not been offered 
there excluding letters from absent candidates and uncertain 
voters generally. 

QUAY AND PENROSE AS POLITICAL MACHINISTS. 

"This political machine, with all its newest patents and at- 
tachments, is best operated by its inventors. The Senate of 
the United States must do without two of them when the 
war revenue bill is up in the Senate. They hurry away to 
Harrisburg to see that the machine does not get out of order 
until the tune is finished and to play the Tunch and Judy" 
of politics to the farmers of Pennsylvania. 

"My friends, it would be delightfully ridiculous if it was 
not also serious. We might be quite willing to be amused, 
to be taken for Hght-headed, half-witted, unsophisticated clod- 
hoppers of city and country were it not that the consequences 
are all tremendously fraught with evil._ What do you and I 
care who is Grovernor if he be a man that owns himself and 
can be certified as honest, intelligent and guaranteed for fi- 
delity to the people and not to any one man or a dozen men 
of the political machine now built or to be built hereafter? 
What was the deliverance of the Bourse conference but a 



THE FIGHT TO GO ON. 209 

heartfelt, manly, Eepublican appeal and notice of determined 
and continuous protest against the Quay- Andrews machine? 
What was the three months' long, earnest, laborious, enthusi- 
astic, fruitful crusade in a dozen counties of this State but 
an unfolding of the reasons why the political machine can no 
longer command support for long-slated, boss-marked, ma- 
chine-riveted candidates? What was the meaning of the 
great assemblages of the people like this, day and night 
throughout the Commonwealth; the earnest, forceful, execu- 
tive work of the old and true but not new style Eepublican 
press in our own and other States, counseling Pennsylvania 
Republicans to caution and pointing out dangers if slate and 
machine methods were this year persisted in? 

"The convention has come and gone. What did it do? 
Exactly what it wanted to do and all the time doggedly meant 
to do; exactly what public sentiment, never before more crys- 
tallized, asked and urged it not to do. Whom has it served? 
The bosses, and the bosses only and their retainers. Who 
are its candidates? Their chief is the long back chosen man- 
ager who shall operate the machine for four years with the 
power of the Governor's office and his appointees assisting 
him. Who are the others? Respectable soldiers, honored 
civilians, each to have hold of the handles of the political 
basket to help carry it through the crowd and deliver it safely 
to the machine fishermen. 

"What is the platform? "A confused pound of mixture not 
up to its credited author's. General Bingham, bright stand- 
ard; perhaps it was afterwards edited or unedited. As it 
stands it is a reminder of that man's way of telling the time 
of day who said: ^When the hands of my clock point to 2 
and it strikes 11 I know it is half -past 7.' The most pitiful 
part of that platform is the congratulations to the brewers 
as supporters of the State and benefactors of the people in 
relieving them by license fees. It says nothing of the close 
to a million dollar appropriation to penitentiaries and work 
houses, known to be largely filled by the curse of intoxicating 
liquors, and saying nothing of the larger blight on families 
broken up by the business paraded in that platform by small 



210 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

two-penny statemanship as reducing and relieving State taxa- 
tion. Bear in mind I am not discussing a brewer's or liquor 
selling business. I am speaking of the infantile statesmanship 
that mistakes the condition of taxation and makes the farmers 
and all who live inside the State of Pennsylvania to pay their 
taxes a class of charity patients at the door of the brewer and 
barkeeper. 

"I am also a Republican, unwilling to surrender the Re- 
publican party to help any Populistic, Liberty, Prohibition, 
Independent, Democrat, by insulting the taxpayers with be- 
ing dependent upon the distillers and brewers. 

"Honestly where is the man that is thinking all around, 
large thoughts over all the situation, and not over a small 
patch of the war or the present situation of politics. I believe 
I only know one in the country, and his name is William 
McKinley. In Pennsylvania I cannot find another not even 
by looking into my own looking glass. 

THE FORCED NOMINATION OF STONE. 

"Let me shorten to-day's speech by a brief summary of the 
situation: 

"The forced nomination of WilHam A. Stone for Governor 
stands for all that Quay wants and for all that Quayism 
means. 

"The credit or the obloquy of the nomination is clearly de- 
fined in the specially selected candidate who is absolutely 
dependent on the power of the machine for his preferment. 
The history of this State is barren of a single instance in 
which a candidate, named and elected by Quay, was strong 
enough to assert official manhood in opposition to the cor- 
rupt demand of this exacting master. This boss makes no 
mistake in the selection of the agents to execute his will, and 
after months of dodging and deceit, of plotting and scheming, 
he comes into the open and avows himself for William A. 
Stone, in confirmation of the cabal of mercenaries who met at 
Avalon on that fateful Sunday in May. 

"Whatever may be the individual merit of William A. 
Stone, it is wholly lost by reason of the corrupt advocacy of 
his nomination by such infamous managers. 



TEE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 211 

"From almost every election precinct in the State is herald- 
ed an earnest protest against such machine methods, and the 
deep regret that the arbitrary power exercised at the conven- 
tion must surely bring inevitable danger to its nominee. 

"The outraged people are determined to save this magnifi- 
cent Commonwealth from infamy and shame by rescuing the 
party from such disgraceful management. The repeated 
charges unanswered and undenied that this clique has sys- 
tematically robbed the Treasury of the State, thwarted the 
President in maintaining the national honor, speculated in 
the public funds, Federal appointments and corrupt legisla- 
tion and defied public sentiment, furnished grave reasons of 
warning when these bosses now seek to extend their power 
so that the vicious legislation which was defeated by the val- 
orous ^Seventy-six' in 1896 shall be revived and confirmed by 
their Governor and their Legislature in 1899. 

"Honest men everywhere are called upon by imperative ne- 
cessity when this lawless band in control of the Eepublican 
party leads another march towards the Treasury and its power 
against the real welfare of the people. 

"My argument is not ended, but it must close to-day by 
saying your only bulwark against what I doubt not will be 
worse than the Legislature of 1897 — I mean thereby the Leg- 
islature of '95 — if you could only see the inside of it — will 
be to build a wall of honest men against the machine Govern- 
or in view by carefully selecting the men of 1899." 



MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 



Mr. Wanamaker's Address before the Business Men's 

Republican League at the Bourse, August 25, 1898. 

The Machine must be Overthrown at all 

costs — The Robber Barons of Politics 

to be Driven from Power. 



Preparatory to opening the campaign of the Fall of 1898 
Hon. John Wanamaker attended a meeting of the Business 
Men's Eepublican League of the State of Pennsylvania, he'd 
at the Bourse, Philadelphia, on the afternoon of August 



212 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

25th. Delegates were present from nearly every branch 
League in the State. The greatest enthusiasm marked the 
deliberations of the League. Mr. Wanamaker, who was 
called on to address the League, was received with hearty and 
prolonged applause. His speech on this occasion was one 
of thos3 keynote utterances for which he is noted. He said: 

"In projecting a new railroad it is possible at the outstart 
to map out the line and locate all the stations. Not so with 
political campaigns unless you own the machine and boss 
the people's treasury and its branch banks. The building 
of the Northern Pacific across the continent was a small un- 
dertaking to this of yours, that of building a new Eepub- 
lican turnpike of upright politics and good government 
through this one State of Pennsylvania. It will be interest- 
ing as a matter of history to note that it was when Quay 
was making his second fight against Hastings, then Gov- 
ernor, to unhorse Gilkeson, his partner, and long trusted 
chairman of the State Committee, and at a cost that Mr. 
Quay is known to have stated as over $200,000, that the 
first honest, determined moves were made against the Quay 
machine. This was in the autumn of 1895. A number of 
those men, some of whom are present here to-day, have never 
turned back and never swerved in the battle. They are 
soldiers who have been at the front and in the fray for al- 
most three years. The originators of this Business Men's 
Organization, some of whom are present to-day, started it 
early in 1896 to hold the State for McKinley, when Quay 
was either dead against him or corraling Congressmen and 
deleg'ates for the purpose of bargaining. 

"The whole force of this Business Men's League was given 
in time, service, meetings and money contributions to the 
campai^ to further the election of McKinley. In Novem- 
ber, 1896, on the election of McKinley, the organization of 
this Business Men's League was declared permanent, and its 
purpose fixed. 

"That purpose was and shall continue to be to free Penn- 
sylvania from its infamous manasrement, and to lift the Re- 
publican party from the degrading control that it is said 
did not hesitate in Philadelphia by the use of National Com- 



THE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN, 213 

mittee money to defiantly buy the nomination and election 
of a Sheriff at a cost of 30,000 votes taken from McKinley 
in his hour of peril. 

AN OUTRAGED STATE. 

"The outraged State then entered upon a stubborn fight 
to elect a United States Senator. From the date of Cam- 
eron's withdrawal letter efforts had been made by indi- 
viduals to make it possible to secure the election of other 
than a machine candidate. The Business Men's League 
stoutly refused to permit any issue to be made with the 
people on the Senatorial question until McKinley's election 
was finally declared. There then remained but two months 
to make a public sentiment for any political candidate. The 
candidacy of the present speaker was not declared until 
November, 1896. That contest, actively entered into by the 
Business Men's League, was the first potent attack on the 
citadel of the State political machine, and it marks the be- 
ginning of a new epoch in Pennsylvania politics. Destruc- 
tion then settled noiselessly and unseen on political leaders 
and the Quay machine. 

^TVIen became articles, pieces of furniture, in the Quay 
stock, with prices attached in plain figures, and the Eepub- 
lican ticket bore this plain device: 'Buy me off with an 
office or money.' Court rooms, Capitol rooms, corridors and 
close corners of hotels became the common market place 
for votes. The whole business of electing a United States 
Senator was an arithmetical problem- and a check book. That 
same night — the night that settled the election of United 
States Senator — ^after the vote had been taken and become 
a matter of record, legislators and leaders, showing the char- 
acter of the machine and the spirit of the men, made a 
procession in the streets with brass bands, conducting mock 
religious exercises with mock h3rmns, and kneeling on the 
highway in mock prayers, amid loud laughter and sacri- 
legious ribaldry, raised with bribe stained hands their altar 
of worship with shouting: ^Great is our Diana of Penn- 
sylvania!' Did ever before in the history of any State Capi- 
tol, a Legislature and its henchmen on the night of its first 
meeting so defy the public sentiment and outrage decency 



314 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

by making sport in public of religious things under the 
shadow of its State buildings? That was a short night, but 
out of it was born the day of doom. The dark cloud of 
blundering and crime, of disruption and destruction has 
never lifted for an hour. The processes of dissolution of the 
dominating party machine have steadily eventuated. It lives 
now only from day to day, and goes steadily on to an un- 
blessed tomb. 

'^^Strong, determined, increasing, and unfailing as are the 
forces against it, the causes from which it must die are from 
the inside and not from the outside. 

THE LAST LEGISLATURE. 

"The last Legislative almanac is a black calendar of dark 
and dismal days for Pennsylvania. 

"The hideous and profane orgies at the beginning of the 
season quickly begun, and persistent prosecution of the 
^Seventy-six' who dared to stand out individually, and who 
thereafter compacted to stand against the Quay machine col- 
lectively, cursed from beginning to end and violently threat- 
ened by swollen lips as if the profanity and fury of the Quay 
machine could sweep the earth; the strange openly charged 
suspicious burning of the Capitol with its destruction of 
State papers — snuffed out like a candle; the onslaught on 
the Treasury by means of the Andrews-Lexow bills, padded 
pay rolls. Junketing committee bills, investigating miners 
and oleo committees, padded appropriation .bills, Grace 
Church scandals, culminating in the Reeder-Elkins-Mylin- 
Heywood and others' indemnity bond, a crime so gross, a 
fraud so palpable that even a pliant, complacent State Treas- 
urer halted in the presence of so great an iniquity and re- 
quired seven of his companions to hold him up in his awful 
position by an indemnity bond; the desperate resistance of 
the Quay-Andrews machine to paying interest on State 
moneys, and narrow escape of despoiling the schools to keep 
the brewers' bargain; the break up of the Governor's Cabinet, 
Attorney General's office, retiring the premier and Assistant 
Attorney General, followed by the astounding but partial 
disclosures of the People's Bank with other State and trust 
compamies and further bank failures lately added to by the 



THE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 215 

going down of the State Insurance Company, which was a 
State officers' political concern, and, like the Guarantors' 
Company, is still an unsettled quantity, all form a sum total 
so heavy that it would sink to the bottom the best and 
strongest political party on the earth. This is not the time 
to repeat the details. I can only say that each day's notor- 
ious revelations scalded the State from one end to the other 
as with boiling water, and that ♦even to-day, a year after, 
the State is sore all over and crying for relief. While the 
Business Men's League in its offices at Harrisburg and at 
Philadelphia kept daily watch at one point for the snakes 
in the House and the Senate, and at the other point upon 
the corporations and concerns that backed up and sheltered 
Legislative committtees, the press bureau established by 
them was doing its work spreading the information in city 
and country until the entire State turned its eyes on Harris- 
burg, and thus helped to keep in check the flood of iniquity. 
DR. SWALLOW'S CANDIDACY. 

"It was at this juncture in the contest about the 22d of 
February, 1897, that the Eev. Dr. Swallow appeared and added 
his services by assisting through his newspaper and by per- 
sonal charges of robbery of the State, alleged falsified bills 
in the furnishing of Grace Church, and thereafter entered 
upon his candidacy for State Treasurer on the Prohibition 
ticket, receiving at the election 118,000 votes. The largest, 
in recent years, vote for the Prohibitionists being less than 
25,000, the balance must be taken as the protest of the 
aroused people against the Quay machine. 

"The Business Men's Republican League, without any can- 
didate for office, and working upon settled principles for 
good government, demanding only the reform of the Quay 
machine or its retirement, never ceased to keep up its efforts 
through the press, and perfecting of organizations through- 
out the State. In February, 1898, it was instrumental in 
creating a public sentiment in the Republican party that cul- 
minated in the now famous Bourse Conference of 400, rep- 
resenting fifty-five counties of the State, when well-known 
and long-honored Republicans entered protest against the 
methods of the machine, and put forward tentatively a can- 



216 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

didate for Governor. Those 400 Republicans in the Bourse 
Conference ventured to light a lamp for the machine to see 
its way in June, not to a particular candidate, but away from 
the one slated against the will of tens of thousands of voters 
throughout the State. 

"Several weeks were permitted to elapse in order that the 
Republican party leaders might signify a disposition to halt 
and listen to their compatriots reasonable protest. When 
there seemed no hope of any serious consideration, a canvass 
of the State was entered upon to make clear to the people 
the dangers overhanging them through the prostitution of 
the whole governmental organization by the sordid, malign 
and rapacious power of machine corruption. Most vigor- 
ously and faithfuly it was pointed out by a number of the 
aggressive members of this League that there had been plenty 
of profligacy before, but much of it had been concealed. The 
fidelity and courage of a worthy band of honest legislators 
uncovered it in the last Legislature as it had never been un- 
covered before. More than that, with an appetite which 
grows by what it feeds on, this machine power became in- 
creasingly insatiate. It debauched men of hitherto accepted 
respectability. It organized systematic raids on the Treas- 
ury. It menaced property rights and security. It assailed 
the bulwarks which safeguarded our municipal government. 

THE FLOOD TIDE OF COKRUPTION. 

"Alarmed and aroused by the flood tide of corruption, we 
sought the more earnestly to secure protection against its 
advance by making an impassable barrier in the Governor's 
chair. That effort met with a popular response, which 
elected a majority of the convention. Unfortunately, the 
usual machine influences were again successfully exerted, 
and the result was a disappointment to the hopes of Repub- 
licans and good citizens of all parties, who wanted to see a 
control established which should be responsible only to the 
people. 

"It would have been easy for the Quay machine to have 
represented the people in the June Convention, but it flatly 
refused to do so. It was warned of vital danger, and the 



THE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 217 

white gate of justice, honor and safety was open to it plainly, 
and for a long time, but it would not see. 

"Such mistaken leadership of the Kepublican party seemed 
to distinctly affect the public press and the other great party, 
and the hope was held out that wisdom was gathering that 
would take advantage of the follies of leaders who had out- 
grown advice and warnings. 

"But each machine gets an idea into its one mind, and the 
ideas of all other minds must come in only to sit at its feet. 
Platforms passed by each convention have been paraded and 
notifications have been made, and all that there is left is 
the plain fact that the Republican party knows that it knows 
nothing of the last Legislature and its evil administration 
of the State Treasury, and the Democratic party knows that 
it knows nothing of it having sold itself to Quay. Standing 
out among the breakers are these two monumental examples 
of self-inflation and self-idolatry. In the meantime, when 
the Business Men's League was in the midst of its campaign, 
some weeks after the Lancaster opening speech, in which it 
was distinctly stated that the fight begun would be waged 
summer, autumn and winter, the Honest Government party 
nominated a ticket with Rev. Silas C. Swallow at its head, 
which ticket was quickly endorsed successively by the Pro- 
hibitionists, Populists, People's and Liberty organizations. 

"This ticket, thus launched, and representing but one sec- 
tion of the anti-Quay voters, is obviously an inadequate 
rallying centre for all the varied shades of sentiment com- 
posing the popular revolt; whereas, in the present contest, 
the single and supreme issue is the overthrow of the Quay 
machine and the effacement of Quay methods in the Govern- 
ment. Wisdom and good politics, it would seem, should have 
dictated a postponement of less imminent issues, and an 
effort at the unification of the scattered forces of revolution. 
The worthy advocates of prohibition cannot with safety to 
themselves ignore the exigencies which lay before all good 
citizens the duty in this critical hour of joining hands with 
each other in achieving the common end we all profess to 
have in view. When public thieves unite for plunder, surely 
honest men should not find it difficult to unite for defence. 



218 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

KOBBER BARONS OF POLITICS. 

"If the rescue of the State from the powerful rohber barons 
of politics was not the burning question, and the election 
not pending to return to the United States Senate for six 
years more M. S. Quay, who is chiefly responsible for the 
deplorable condition of State politics — this year might be 
as good as any to record a testimony for temperance and 
prohibition. This experiment to test the Prohibition vote, 
swollen as it will be by offering a rallying point to all dis- 
satisfied party men, will be costly business if it assists in 
fixing the Quay shackles on Pennsylvania until 1905. 

"In view of the grave consequences impending hurried 
conferences have been held lately with Dr. Swallow and 
others in accord with him, taking a broad and disinterested 
view of the present situation, studjdng the possibility of a 
unification of all the forces opposed to the Quay machine, 
whether of the Harrisburg, Altoona or pther forms, and 
making a thoroughly representative ticket, eliminating all 
present or past candidates or using them as might seem most 
practicable to form a winning ticket. 

"Thus far some progress has been made, but not enough 
to build definite hopes of final success. Yet it is well to 
continue the efforts in more directions than one for a union 
of forces to overturn the Quay- Andrews machine. It would 
be well for us all to keep in view that time tries all things, 
and that the ever deepening human experience of men will 
critically and accurately place the responsibility of mis- 
takes in the present political movement. 

"Leaving for a moment in abeyance the State tickets nom- 
inated, and regretting that no door has been opened to unite 
the Quay opponents, except upon a surrender to Democracy, 
Prohibition or Populism, there is still open a plain pathway 
of duty for this Business Men's League, which may also be 
made clear to all voters opposed to the reinvestment of the 
Quay machine. Thus far we have carried a banner of protest 
against the State Republican party and its leadership and 
manipulation. Patiently and persistently we have endeav- 
ored to get a hearing and gain attention to principles. No 
personal ambitions have ever been controlling forces in this 



THE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 219 

campaign, which is to be unending until freedom is secured 
from the slavery of Quayism. All the young men of Penn- 
sylvania, Eepublicans or Democrats, are not willing to begin 
in life with a ready-made political creed; neither are the old 
men as willing as formerly to be satisfied with the ready made 
outfits of political machines. 

"History may be lost on some people, but there are others 
who look backward and remember that they were victims 
to the sting of the moccasin. Their eyes are on the alert 
for the virulent old serpent; at least, to avoid it, if not to 
dig its grave. It is natural when many of one^s ancestral- 
family have been killed by rattlesnakes for the younger fel- 
lows coming on not to play with rattlesnakes. 

"It is equally natural for the neighborhood to organize and 
arm for their extermination. 

A PLAIN DUTY. 

"This is the plain duty to-day of the voters and taxpayers 
of Pennsylvania, independent of old party lines or no par- 
ties. Exterminate the machine! 

"In some form there must now be a general and well or- 
ganized movement, guided by political exeprience, to crys- 
tallize and practicalize the impulse and purpose of the true 
men who for three years have fought for the redemption of 
the party and the safety of the State. The duty is clear, 
immediate and commanding. A Prohibition Governor with 
a Quay Republican and Democratic Legislature behind him 
will have but Kttle more than an empty chair, so far as any 
practical good to the State is concerned. 

"A Quay Democratic Governor or Quay Republican Gov- 
ernor with an anti-Quay machine Legislature against him 
can do small harm. Whatever else is impossible, it is to-day 
not impossible to elect a Legislature publicly pledged to three 
things — First, opposition, first, last and all the time, to the 
Quay machine; second, to the re-election of M. S. Quay for 
Senator, because his re-election means the continuation of 
the machine; third, to the election of any man to the United 
States Senate dictated by M. S. Quay or the Quay machine. 
Party caucuses and party loyalty must no longer be snares 
and delusions to entrap unsuspecting men. Mark higher 



220 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

throughout the State all men that stand out for self-owner- 
ship. 

"The Eepubliean party of Pennsylvania and the con- 
trolling Quay machine cannot be right, and its State Legis- 
lature wrong, for twenty years' hand running. 

"The fight must be carried into the election of the Legis- 
lature. The legislative halls are the fountain of corruption. 
We sought to stop the poison by damming the stream after 
it was started. We must go to the source, and purify it at 
the very origin. We must aim at the election of such a 
Legislature that there will not be need of Executive interpo- 
sition as the only salvation from such monstrous wrongs as 
we witnessed a year ago last winter. 

"There is a civic personality as well as an individual per- 
sonality. They are closely allied. In seeking the explan- 
ation of the legislative life you are brought face to face with 
the men who control it. The architect is always behind the 
house he builds. Like master, like man. If the heroic 
fathers of long ago such as Charles Sumner and Wendell 
Phillips, Washington and Lincoln, could have seen that 
Pennsylvania, one of the old thirteen, in the year of '97-98, 
would go down under the drunkeries, breweries, oileries, and 
briberies, bartering laws and franchises and offices at high 
noon in the market places, they would have wept tears of 
blood. 

THE ONE ISSUE. 

"For the first time the issue narrows to stopping the elec- 
tion of a Legislature pledged, publicly or privately, to vote 
for the Machine Architect and Builder, M. S. Quay, for 
United States Senator. 

"The pendulum of the Pennsylvania clock of public opin- 
ion swings the hour for him to retire. 

"Who his successor shall be is not important, provided he 
is an undoubted and unceasing enemy of the old Quay ma- 
chine. Eesentments and personal ambitions must have no 
place in this fight. All believers in good government, willing 
to do something besides talking, must get together for ac- 
tion with their batteries of time, personal service, and money 
to print truth. Mere intrepidity or sentiment will amount 



THE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 221 

to nothing. It is a great work and requires a type of men 

not given to hesitation or expecting failure. Men fearless of 

criticism, contempt and murderous hatred — Rough Riders 

taking their lives in their hands. Men 

*' 'Like him who 
Never turned his back, but marched breast forward; 
Never doubted clouds would break; 

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would tri- 
umph. 
Held always; we fall to rise; are baffled to fight better.' 

"In the summer holidays we have not rocked our duties to 
sleep or imagined we were discharged. Rested and refreshed, 
we strip now for renewed battle. We know there were not 
two Septembers nor two Octobers in this year; but these two 
months before us must count six in invincible resoluteness 
and unflinching aggression. 

"We have been keeping books of what was going on, cal- 
culating the verbal jugglery of caucuses and conventions, 
balancing platforms and purposes, measuring shallow dif- 
ferences and discovering controlling causes. 

"We have watched the play of the one enemy with two 
masks. The air has been filled with hot currents of com- 
promises on all sides, the Business Men^s League, its leaders 
and friends included. None of these airy balloons rise from 
us. They come from the swamps and flats and shooting 
grounds of our enemies. Overtures are as plenty as black- 
berries, from both political parties running down hill, out of 
wind and water, whose call to fall down and worship them falls 
on hearts that once trusted them, but still remember anti- 
election protestations and broken pledges. We are not com- 
promisers, and cannot be bought, bullied or beaten in the 
long run, because our cause is just and our purposes true. 
THE DUTY OF THE HOUR. 

"There can be no harmony in the State of Pennsylvania 
or the Republican party so long as the Quay-Andrews ma- 
chine exists. The days to balance and consider are well- 
nigh past; the whole year is not summer. We are pushed 
on by the invisible spirits of our noble heroes who have 
passed away — the Blaines, the Stevens, the Wilmots, the Ran- 
dalls and others like them. We are pressed hard by a great 



222 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

living multitude, scattered throughout the State, whose 
hearts ache for the woes of our old Commonwealth. Good 
men and women everywhere, long burdened by the extrav- 
agance and corruption of legislation, and consequent over 
taxation, make their appeal to us to deliver them from 
another Legislature like that of ^96-97, and from the 
direful evils of the old political machine. 

"Not to make herculean effort would be a crime. 

"If Santiago were worth taking from the Spaniards, Penn- 
sylvania, immensely more valuable, must be taken from a 
worse enemy — the Quay machine. 

" ^The stars in their courses fight with us.' The war with 
Spain, thank God, is over, and the false issue under which 
the despairing Quay machine hoped to retain power will no 
longer serve their ignoble uses. A thousand flags for McKin- 
ley and the brave heroes who have died in the nation's de- 
fence, but the fair folds of our glorious and triumphant 
banner cannot be made to shield the deadliest foes of our 
national honor or confuse the patriots of Pennsylvania in 
achieving the victories of peace. 

"To-day the friends of good government and enemies of 
Quay domination are a scattered and unrelated host, but they 
are a host, an overwhelming majority of the people. I con- 
fidently entertain the belief that even yet the fitly spoken 
word will be somewhere uttered or a deliverance as yet 
unheralded will occur that, like an alarm bell in the night 
will call together into one irresistible army good citizens of 
whatever party name or political faith. Born of an ardent 
hope and confident trust in the justice of our cause I will not 
believe that the forces of evil will forever triumph. 
DEALING IN STATE FUNDS. 

"Even as I pen this sentence I take up the morning's paper 
to read the most timely and startling revelation of the in- 
iquities of the Quay plunderers that has yet appeared. 

"Listen to the testimony of ex-Congressman Darlington, 
the President of the broken Chester County Trust Company, 
as it was given yesterday at West Chester. This institution, 
it will be remembered, was one of the Quay machine's 'pet 
banks,' and a large holder of State deposits — the people's 



TEE MACHINE MUST BE OVERTHROWN. 223 

money. Under the pressure of keen cross-examination, Pres- 
ident Darlington was forced to tell a large part, but still 
only a part, of the truth as to how the Quay harpies forced 
the people to pay for their own ruin. A morning paper says 
this company was required to donate 3 per cent, on a de- 
posit of $80,000 of State money to the Kepublican State 
Committee and the County Committee for political purposes. 
Listen to the report of yesterday's legal proceedings as taken 
from another morning paper. When asked what was meant 
by ^current expenses' charged on the books of the company, 
Mr. Darlington replied that they were political contribu- 
tions. 

" ^To the Eepublican State and County Committees?' 
asked Mr. Pennypacker. 

" ^Yes.' 

" ^"Were these expenses paid pursuant to an understanding 
•with anybody?' he was asked. 

AN IMPLIED UNDERSTANDING. 

" ^A sort of implied understanding,' was the reply. 

" 'An understanding with whom?' 

'^ 'With the parties who were influential in controlling 
State (Jeposits,' said Mr. Darlington. 

" niVas this understanding with the State Treasurer?' 

'' 'I did not say that,' said Mr. Darlington; 'it was an im- 
plied understanding.' 

" 'Who was that understanding with?' 

" 'With those who controlled State deposits.' 

" 'Who were they?' 

" 'Myself, for one.' 

"'Who else?' 

" 'Various parties connected with the Republican organi- 
zation.' 

" 'Was the State Treasurer one of these parties?' 

" 'I never had any conversation with him upon that sub- 
ject. I was myself on his bond, and I had some say where 
the money should go." 

"Question by the auditor: 'As long as the State deposit 
was in the trust company there was paid in contributions 
each year from 2 to 3 per cent?' 



224 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

" ^It was simply an implied agreement between the trust 
company that received the deposit and thos© influential 
enough to get the deposit?' 

" 'Yes/ answered Mr. Darlington, and he was permitted 
to go. 

" Termitted to go?' What! Crime dismissed with a bow 
of courtesy? Surely this cannot be when Pennsylvania has 
an honest Attorney General, while the courts are open to the 
humblest citizen or the collective citizenship of the State, 
and the Grand Jury sits to make inquest for the Common- 
wealth. 

FAITH IN THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. 

"Permitted to go? This crime to go unwhipped! These 
criminal conspirators not brought to the bar of justice! Light 
is breaking in Mr. Attorney General. Since daylight this 
August morning the alarm bell has rung. Fellow Citizens, 
verily, ^the stars in their courses do indeed fight with the 
people. Tweed and his plundering partners fell in the very 
moment of their seeming greatest strength and power, and 
the descent was swift and awful to exile, to the criminal 
dock, to the convict's tomb. And our faithless leaders and 
their banded followers may profit by the example. Will they 
seek in flight the immunity that the law denies? Yesterday's 
West Chester revelations blaze the way of duty for all who 
hold commission in the people's cause. Are there no other 
defunct political organizations that should be heard from 
and compelled to render up their secrets of crime and cor- 
ruption? The probe has entered the wound; let it now be 
pushed on to the heart of the festering sore. Thank God, 
fellow-citizens, Henry C. McCormick is the Attorney General 
of the State, and bows not to the Quay mastery. He holds 
a brief for the people, and the people will not be disappointed 
in their legal representative. The day of doom is coming 
— nay, it is here. Again I say, let us rejoice that the At- 
torney General's office still belongs to the people, and their 
servant there is able, honest, brave and faithful to the cause 
of truth and right. 

"Our path from this hour more than ever is straight- 
forward.' 



TEE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 225 

THE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 



Wherein lies its strength — Corporations, Office- 
holders, Newspapers and even Charities are 
forced to stand up for it. Some of the 
mighty influences that have 
worked against the People 
and for Quay— A Speech 
to 25,000 Farmers. 



On Thursday, September 2d, Mr. Wanamaker, at the re- 
quest and invitation of the managers, visited Williams Grove, 
where the farmers of Central Pennsylvania hold their annual 
gatherings. Mr. Wanamaker's progress through the grounds 
was an ovation. When he reached the platform he was 
greeted by an audience of 25,000 farmers — men who had come 
to learn the truth. Mr. Wanamaker's speech to this vast 
audience produced a deep impression .on his hearers. Mr. 
Wanamaker said: 

"Whether there are 25,000 farmers here to-day or not, as 
I am told, I am free to say that I have never before seen a 
larger bundle of the mainsprings of Pennsylvania together. 
I offer you my hand as a country boy from the beginning. 
I shall never be anything else to the end. The city has never 
shaded down my sense of indebtedness to my country home, 
to my country father, and especially to my country mother. 

"To me always the farmers and gardeners of the earth are 
the real aristocrats. The first woman and the first man were 
appointed gardeners. They still live in the open air where 
God started the first family. The city folk are mostly shut 
up in mills and workshops, where they see not much more 
than the length of their arms. But country dwellers are the 
sunrise people whose eyes are open earlier and keep open 
longer during each twenty-four hours than any other class. 

"To see something beside machinery, brick houses and 
paved streets has much to do with our lives. Men accus- 
tomed to watch the clouds and depend upon the seasons 
grow a large crop of new and large thoughts that tend toward 
making larger men. Out of the farm houses comes the en- 



226 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

richment of the world in health, honesty, valor, manhood 
and good citizenship. 

"I am not given to serving taffy and shall not retail to you 
stale compliments, neither because I am at an agricultural 
meeting shall I trot out the old gray mare of supply and 
demand which I am told is a common topic of a farmers' 
meeting. I leave the standing dishes on the speech table to 
go together with you over to the unfailing creek of common 
sense for a fresh drink with which to start to-day into the 
Autumn. 

"If I mistake not your earnest faces betoken that you are 
here for much more than hand-shaldng and acquaintance 
making. The harvesting of this year is a notable one for 
the United States. A favoring Providence bade the sun 
write prosperity over your fields and to put down anew your 
names with rewards for honest labor. 

"You are the men of full barns. More than this. Uncle 
Sam's bam has in it Santiago and Hawaii, and goodness 
knows how much of Manila and the Philippines. These are 
no longer near or far off neighbors with whom we are on 
visiting terms, but they are in the family, sisters of Pennsyl- 
vania. Jamiaca and the islands of the West Indies are knock- 
ing at your doors to get into the sisterhood. The United 
States is not as small as it was a year ago. It now stretches 
from Maine to Hawaii and from Alaska half way round the 
world to the Philippines. 

"Greeting Ireland as the Emerald Isle of Great Britain, 
east your eyes upon the Emerald Isles of Cuba, Hawaii and 
the Ladrones. These are the emerald setting of the old 
cluster of American jewels that we count by the stars on our 
flag. 

"The four months' harvest of the uninvited war is im- 
mense. The contentions of years in our State Department 
closed when the 'Maine' went down. A wave of resolute 
patriotism swept the land. Those who believed that the 
spirit of 1861 had died out have changed their minds. When 
many a soldier's cap was lifted it uncovered the gray heads 
of old war veterans, and none of the highways to the front 



THE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 227 

were broad enough for the numbers of young men, recruits 
who hastened after the flag. Thank God! the boys are facing 
homeward. They come back to their old places at the plow 
and workshop. American boys are not tavern idlers, and 
they will find their homes and the work that awaits workers. 
God bless the unkissed heroes of Pennsylvania! 

TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 

"This war, settled all too soon for the politicians and con- 
tractors, leaves much for statesmen to do. The new con- 
ditions cry for broad and unselfish thinking if we are to be 
true to the spirit and professions upon which we entered the 
battlefields. The masterful guiding of the Ship of State by 
one man who stands high up, quiet, cool, far-seeing — above 
all other men now that the smoke of battle is cleared away — 
is William McKinley. 

"Beside the names of Washington, Lincoln and Grant em- 
broider on your American flags William McKinley. The 
strength of character that came on time to shore and ship 
for the emergencies of war will not fail in the adjustments of 
peace. 

"Pennsylvania, brave enough and alert enough to put the 
first troops in the field, and with thousands more eager for 
the fray, can hope to contribute but little toward making 
good government for Cuba while she is overrun mth the wild 
steers who have trodden down every vestige of good govern- 
ment that our fathers planted long ago. With the pumps at 
home mostly broken or rotten we cannot supply water to our 
neighbors. 

"Pennsylvania can fight well, give generously to feed, to 
nurse sick soldiers, send cargoes of grain to famine-stricken 
Ireland and Russia, but confesses its inability to govern 
itself by letting out its State Government practically to one 
man who has had a twenty years' lease and is arranging for a 
six years' renewal. The Quay macliine would probably like 
to undertake the management of Cuba and all the rest if they 
could see any profit in it, and it could be done like Republican 
conventions from Atlantic City on Sundays. The fact is the 
Quay machine did undertake to govern McKinley in this war, 



228 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

but found the only way to get along with the President was 
to permit him to have his head. It is odd to see those who 
cried mad-dog over his nomination and at his war policy 
asking you who have always been so loyal to him not to be 
hostile now. 

CORRUPTION IN THE STATE. 

"It is not my fancy only that sees the deep shadows of 
anxiety upon your faces as you think soberly of the corrupt 
and costly government of Pennsylvania, and your disgrace 
that Pennsylvania politically is only a cemetery for its free- 
men. You allowed our young, hopeful men to be fed on 
gravel stones until their teeth were broken. The doctors and 
nurses of politics in our State have nursed the youth with a 
wolfs care, and when they could not suck their blood they 
strangled them. The candle of hope has almost gone oul^ in 
Pennsylvania. You have suffered so long the interlopers of 
your rights have a right of way over your possessions until 
they now deny your ownership. You have cruelly slept in 
the delusion that by a Quay machine-promised miracle the 
tares that were sowing might raise a crop of wheat. You 
have, occasionally mowed down some of the weeds here and 
there, but never pulled them up by the roots and plowed and 
sowed the fields for thankful harvesting. 

"This great company of grangers, with a power of its own 
outside of all political parties, is not a mere society of or- 
ganized criticism, nor does it comprise affiliated self-seekers; 
it stands for organized intelligence and organized patriotism. 

"Here are men who wear their own clothes, bought by 
their own money and stand upon their own feet. You are 
not supported by the State money, or under any bonds to 
support State bosses. You are the men who by hardness, 
by long struggles, by sharp self-denials have conquered the 
soil, which you have temporarily lost control of, but if you 
will, by hardness, by a few months' struggle and by self- 
denial, you may reclaim and redeem it for the people. 

"I am here to-day not as a candidate for any office, but as 
a private citizen, speaking to men who know how to do things, 
and who actually do them when they have a mind to; to men 



THE QUAY MACHINE DI8SEGTED. 229 

who plow in January for next JSTovember's flour barrels; men 
who know full well that there must be political plowing in 
September and October if there is to be other than a hap- 
hazard crop of elected men in November and January. 

SIX PROPOSITIONS DISCUSSED. 

"My friends, I wish to present six distinct heads in this 
address, and I do not believe you will find either of them bald, 
small or empty. A drum-headed man said: ^Your speeches 
make me tired,' and he has never smiled on me since he was 
asked whether it was the fault of my speeches or his head: — 

"1. What is the use of being a hard-working, economical 
farmer in Pennsylvania? 

"2. Your enemy, the Quay machine. 

"3. Its size and ramifications. 

"4. Its corporation allies and partners. 

"5. The money filched from you. 

"6. The sure cure. 

"First — What is the use of spending your time in discussing 
and introducing new systems of drainage and fencing and 
cattle feeding, adopting labor-saving mowers and more costly 
fertilizers if at the end of the year one hand only washes the 
other and nothing's left. Why does not farming pay better 
in Pennsylvania? Why will not untiring toil, rigid economy 
and personal sacrifice decrease or keep away the mortgage? 
What is the use of chattering this year like a lot of parrots 
and coming back next year to face the same results? Bounti- 
ful crops and great granaries full year after year, and no 
money in it for anybody but the mortgage owner and the tax 
gatherer! Only a bare living, not much, if any, above com- 
mon laborer's wages for anybody on the farm. 

"Prices, to be sure, are lower than fifty years ago when 
threshing was done by the flail, but the relative cost of pro- 
duction and the selling prices are about the same. No mat- 
ter how much more you raise to the acre your profits are 
down to zero. To be dependent on a Leiter speculation or 
upon the disasters of failing crops and famine, to come out 
whole or with a profit is discouraging to all following the 
business of farming and a misfortune to self-respecting 



330 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN JVANAMAKER. 

people. I feel sure there is some rectification for all this. 
I would not change the large inlets to your barns and gran- 
aries, but I would lessen the size of the outlets from them. 
You pay too much taxes and too large tribute to the corpor- 
ations. The fault is not wholly with your incomes; it is the 
fixed charges that eat them up. You have groaned and gone 
to sleep and woke up with the nightmare until she is the 
oldest mare on your place. 

"Your mortal enemy is a political machine, in parts 40 
years old, and for 20 years known as the Quay machine. 
Like a spectral figure of evil stalking through the land it has 
gone about, the very genius of ruin. You must try to under- 
stand what this machine is, its ramifications, its tens of thou- 
sands of paid workers, their gigantic strength, the alliances 
of county. State and national organizations. 

"Second — What constitutes a political machine? It is a 
place of power like Senator, Governor, State Treasurer and 
a union or Sugar Trust of all such who hold places, a close 
and secret working together to keep themselves in and keep 
out all who will not divide with them; a confederacy to send 
to the bottomless pit all who interfere with their holding the 
office and each office-holder provided with an office, room 
and desk for political business at the public expense, in whicli 
to work during hours the salary paid by the public pm^se, 
though for days, weeks and even months, the only or princi- 
pal work done is for personal or party gain. These men are 
at work continually taking the money to defeat the people's 
will and to serve the machine. 

^'Third — The size and ramifications of this political machine 
— I have taken great pains to accurately gather some of the 
facts that I now state. It must not be understood that there 
are not exceptions of true men in the various departments of 
the Government service both Federal and State as well as 
hundreds of independent newspapers not dominated by the 
Quay machine, but when men like Senator Kamffman, of I^an- 
caster, and Daniel Moore and Plummer Jeffries are whipped 
out of office for opposition to the bosses' will, and the Finneys, 
Saylors and Lytles are set up on the front bench in high 



TEE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 231 

places to show how to get on with the machine, the ex- 
ceptions to subserviency to Quayism are but few. 

PARTS OF THE QUAY MACHINE. 

"Twenty parts of the potent, puzzling and destructive Quay 
machine, constituted of Federal and State officeholders, are 
as follows: — 

"Part A — A Eepublican State Committee which in every 
part is subjugated to serve the personal interests of Senator 
Quay first and the party next, without respect to the will of 
the people. 

"Part B — Great prestige and patronage, controlled by 
Quay as a United States Senator, with two votes, his own and 
the other. 

"Part C — Thirty Congressmen, with their secretaries, sixty 
persons, whose salaries aggregate $180,000 annually, and who 
are responsible to the machine for their respective districts. 

"Part D — The 419 officers and employees of the State gov- 
ernment, who receive in salaries $1,034,500 annually, and 
who are selected only because they are supposed to be able to 
deliver the votes of their districts to any one the Quay 
machine dictates. These men are all assessed by the bosses 
and some of the documents in our possession will he curious 
reading some time. 

"Part E — The State Senate, with every officer, from presi- 
dent pro tem. down to page boys, selected to do the machine's 
bidding. The expenses of the Senate last year were $169,604. 

"Part F — The State House of Representatives, with mem- 
bers, officers and employees, 257 in number, who drew $468,- 
302 last year. All committees are selected by the machine, 
and are chair-manned by men who know no will but that of 
Senator Quay. Thus his machine absolutely controls all 
revenues and tax legislation. 

"Part G — Eight thousand one hundred and twenty two post 
offices, with salaries amounting to $3,705,446. Most post- 
masters are made the personal agents of the machine in their 
respective towns. 



232 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Part H — Four thousand one hundred and forty-nine 
offices, a majority of whom _are controlled by Senators Quay's 
machine, whose salaries amount to $5,000,000. 

"Part I — The Philadelphia Mint, with 438 employees, who 
receive in yearly salaries $326,565. 

"Part J — The offices of collector of port, with 400 employ- 
ees, who receive in salaries $454,000. 

"Part K — The internal revenue offices, with 281 employees, 
who receive in salaries $356,400. 

"Part L — The United States Circuit and District Courts, 
with forty-one employees, who receive in salaries $95,000. 

"Part M — League Island Navy Yard and State arsenals, 
with 585 employees, who receive in salaries $725,000, making 
a total of 14,705 officers and employees who receive from the 
State and National Governments $7,608,911 annually. 

ORGANIZED TO SERVE QUAY. 

"This great army of officeholders are thoroughly organized, 
and are at work every day in the year for the preservation of 
the Quay machine. To give you a clearer conception of what 
the machine is, I have taken, for example, a single county — 
that of Dauphin — which is eleventh in population and thir- 
teenth in valuation, of the sixty-seven counties of this State. 
In this Quay stronghold there are seventy-three salaried 
county offices, controlled by the machine, with annual salar- 
ies amounting to $70,500; also seven Presidential post offices, 
paying salaries amounting to $12,000, and fifty-one fourth- 
class offices, paying $8924, making a total of 131 machine 
agents, who are paid $91,424 by the State and National Gov- 
ernments, at work in one county. 

"Part N — The thousands of trustees, other officials and em- 
ployees of hospitals, State and private; State prisons, re- 
formatories. State asylums, charitable homes, State colleges, 
normal schools, soldiers' orphan schools, scientific institutes 
and museums, who are expected to support the machine or 
the appropriations of their institutions will be endangered. 

"Part — The combined capital of the brewers of tlie State, 
their thousands of employees and dependent patrons whom 
they control. It is alleged to have been the money of the 



TBE QUA7 MACHINE DISSECTED. 333 

brewers that paid the large sums during Superintendent of 
Mint Boyer's administration as State Treasurer, necessary to 
make good shortages, which saved the machine, when his 
cashier, Mr. Livesey, became a fugitive from justice. 

"Part P — Besides the amounts paid for salaries of State 
officers which have already been accounted for, the appropri- 
ation committees, who are of Quay's personal selection, dis- 
burse $10,000,000 annually to schools, hospitals, penal instiT 
tutions, etc. The bold manipulation of these funds for the 
benefit of the machine has educated people to regard moneys 
received for these purposes as personal contributions from 
Senator Quay, in return for which they must render help to 
his machine. 

"Part Q — The State Liquor League, whose members are in 
every city, town, hamlet and cross-roads throughout the State, 
and who maintain a permanent State organization, having 
headquarters and representatives at Harrisburg during the 
sessions of the Legislature, are always for Senator Quay's 
machine, and form an important part of the machine's 
operations. 

"Part E — A large number of the Common Pleas Judges 
throughout the State, who use their license-granting power 
for the benefit of the machine, by rewarding those faithful to 
the cause of Quay, and punishing those opposed to the 
machine. 

"Part S — The millions of withheld school and personal tax 
moneys that are used to further the interests of the machine. 
At 3 per cent, interest — the rate that Smedley Darlington 
testified, last week, under oath, his trust company paid — 'the 
machine has taken $3,500,000 of your money since Senator 
Quay began his reign. 

"Part T — The hundreds of subservient newspapers who 
are recipients of machine favors, with their army of news- 
gatherers and correspondents, who are forced to chloroform 
public sentiment and hide the iniquities of the machine. 

CORPORATIONS AS ALLIES. 
"Fourth — The principal allies and partners of the machine 
are the corporations. The 15,000 national and State office- 



234 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

holders and the thousands of other officials connected with 
State institutions form a small part of the whole number of 
obedient machine men who are constantly at the command of 
Senator Quay, the admitted boss of the machine. The cor- 
poration employees of the State who are controlled for 
Quay's use increase the number to the proportions of a vast 
army. 

"The steam railroads of the State employ 85,117 men and 
pay them annually in wages $49,400,000. Of this number 
the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads furnish 37,911, and 
16,083 men respectively. The Vanderbilt system furnishes 
12,432 men, the Baltimore & Ohio 3,615, the New Jersey 
Central 2,864, the Lehigh Valley 12,062, and the D. L. & W. 
2,150. The great street railways of the State, who have re- 
ceived valuable legislative concessions for nothing, give the 
machine a loyal support with 12,079 employees, who are paid 
in salaries $6,920,692 every year. 

"That monopoly of monopolies, the Standard Oil Com- 
pany, pays annually $2,500,000 to its 3,000 employees, who 
are taught fidelity to Senator Quay's machine. The Bethle- 
hem Iron Works, whose armor plates are sold to the Govern- 
ment for nearly double the contract price offered to foreign 
countries, influence their employees to such an extent that 
in the city of Bethlehem it has been found difficult to get 
men to stand as anti-Quay delegates. 

"The thousands of workingmen of the Carnegie Iron 
Works, it is said, are marched to the polls under the super- 
vision of superintendents and foremen, and voted for Quay 
candidates under penalty of losing their jobs. 

"The great express companies who furnish franks to 
maehirfe followers, one of which is bossed by Senator Piatt, 
with their thousands of men, can be counted on for great 
service to the machine. 

"The telegraph companies, whose State officials can, it is 
said, be found at the inner Quay councils, with the thousands 
of employees distributed at every important point through- 
out the State, and before whom a large share of all important 
news must pass, is one of the most dangerous parts of the 
Quay machine. 



THE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 235 

"The interests of the corporations and those of the masses 
have been diverging for many years, until now what is for 
the people's good will not suit the corporations, and what 
will seemingly satisfy the corporations is no longer safe to 
the people. The unlimited use of wealth and capital where 
there is free and full competition is not to be feared, but 
capital licensed by unjust and discriminating laws is the 
threatening evil of the day. 

Capital with its manifold possibilities for good in itself 
becomes an agency of wrong and calamity when harnessed 
with favored legislation. 

PURCHASING LEGISLATION. 

"Fifth — Unscrupulous Pennsylvania corporations have 
been willing to purchase advantageous legislation and dis- 
honest political leaders have made a business of selling it to 
them. 

"Every act of injustice, every wrong that you have en- 
dured, and every dollar that has been filched from you by 
the greed of corporations has only been made possible by the 
venality and dishonesty of those to whom you have delegated 
the power to make your lajws. The Quay machine in Penn- 
sylvania has no competitor in its line of business. It deals 
exclusively in legislative privileges, and demands its price, 
and the corporations are its patrons. Every franchise, every 
privilege, and every law against your interest, and in favor 
of corporations, and every increase of taxation placed upon 
you to save the corporations, has yielded revenue in some 
form or other to the machine and its master. 

"My friends, if you can be awakened to your true peril 
and see the hand that is holding you by the throat, you will 
be aroused to action, your day of deliverance will soon come. 
There is no use of scolding at the corporations that have 
only accepted what the Quay machine tenders them in return 
for tolls demanded of them for political purposes. I am 
sure that but few in all this assemblage fully realize the mag- 
nitude of the Quay machine and therefore I have told you 
brie% what this franchise granting, legislation selling. 



236 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

monopoly fostering, corporation protecting, taxation increas- 
ing, liberty destroying and manhood crushing machine is. 

"Farmers, it is this disciplined army of selected men who 
are paid annually nearly $100,000,000 in wages backed by 
immense capital, that are constantly working to keep the 
Quay machine in power. The office-holders work to save 
their jobs, and the corporation employees to serve their com- 
panies' ends. 

"The one objective point of the political and corporate 
forces is to olect a Quay-controlled Legislature. Existing 
laws, however harmful they may be to the masses, cannot 
then be disturbed, and new corporation favors can be obtained 
for certain considera/tions. 

"The politicians and corporations have adopted your motto 
and are ^making hay while the sun shines.' The sun will con- 
tinue to shine for the corporations and the rain to fall upon 
you, so long as you give the machine the power to traffic in 
your rights. The corporations hiding behind the machine, 
which they have labeled ^Remember party,' with the Repub- 
lican party's flags and banners carried by a horde of political 
servitors, most of whom have assisted to disgrace and drag her 
colors in the mire, aided by fraud and deception, gather re- 
cruits enough from the rank and file of the party to keep 
the machine in power. 

"Indisputable figures are at hand to show that economic 
management of State affairs will decrease your taxes 35 per 
cent. And could you obtain legislation restoring to you the 
rights that have been sold from you, and enact laws to adjust 
the inequalities of present conditions, you could save still 
more. 

"It is not more crops, but less taxes that the farmers of 
Pennsylvania need to make them prosperous. 

"The criminal daring involved in this political machine 
work and manipulation of franchises will not astonish you if 
I repeat here the common report for years past, that certain 
of the most active bosses are under the constant watch and 
tutelage of prominent State attorneys to keep guard to warn 
them of vital danger and save them from the jail door. 



TEE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 237 

"Daniel is dead and cannot speak to the king, but there are 
living witnesses in the nature of passing events. Smedley 
Darlington, ex- Congressman and of worthy family, and highly 
honorable connections, never made but one speech that shook 
the whole Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that was 
Wednesday of last week, when, under ^oath, he told the truth 
of the black hand upon him that helped to wreck the Chester 
County Trust Company and break the hearts and darken the 
lives of hundreds of too trustful people, who went down with 
that institution on the river of corrupt politics. 

PAID FOR USE OF STATE FUNDS. 

"Mr. Darlington said, putting the case plainly in other 
words, I was on the bond of the State Treasurer and helped 
my bank J;o State money. I was obliged to pay interest; the 
State did not get the interest; it was for use of politicians — 
committees or individual politicians not particularized. Wliy 
not tell all you know, Mr. Darlington, before you have to, 
for surely the Attorney General cannot fail to note your 
confession that you paid money for the use of State money 
that has never reached the State Treasury. How clearly Mr. 
Darlington lets in the light on the causes of the suffering in 
the State Normal and other schools and teachers throughout 
the State, whose appropriations were withheld. What did the 
banks and bankers care when they held the whip over the 
State Treasurer, who could not call in the deposits? Is it not 
clear that the bankers wanted to get money at 2 or 3 per cent, 
to lend at 6 or more, and at the same time serve and accom- 
modate the bosses with dividends and loans for personal or 
campaign expenses? 

"To use the language of an old and valued Quaker friend, 
whose letter I have: This money — referring to what Mr. 
Darlington said about the State money — this money deposited 
there, was your money (the people^s money) and all the profit 
made was the people's. But instead of its going to benefit 
the people through the State Treasurer, it went to certain 
parties to be used in paying themselves while robbing you. 

"You clear-headed, calculating farmers, take a pencil and 
count up, as you easily can, how piuch you have let go from 



238 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER, 

one source to this Judas bag of the Pennsylvania political 
ring in twenty years at 3 per cent. Take the annual balances 
in State banks for the past twenty years as $5,000,000, which 
is less than the actual average, and calculate it at 3 per cent, 
interest, without compounding it, and you have the enormous 
sum of $3,000,000. All this vast sum has in the main gone 
to establish and maintain the Quay machine. You taxpayers 
of Pennsylvania have really had to pay it. 

BURDENS OF NEEDLESS TAXATION. 

"When you look at the burdens of needless taxation you are 
bearing, begin your sum with this $3,000,000, and when you 
like I will show you fifty million more that has been wasted 
by the State, or robbed from you in the last twenty-five years. 
Let the procession of the broken banks and trust companies 
and insurance companies led by the .Chester County Trust 
Company pass on — the People^s Bank, the Chestnut Street 
Bank and Trust Company, the Guarantors and the State In- 
surance Company. Let the Attorney General call up some 
officer like Mr. Darlington to tell a plain story so far as it 
affects State money and politics. Let it be told without verbal 
wriggling so that the people may fully know exactly how 
things stand. 

"It was a noble thing for that sturdy old Scotch-Irish Penn- 
sylvania citizen, James McManes, to respond quick and true 
to his early training, and declare that neither the State nor 
individuals shall lose money in a bank of which for a long 
time he, the president, was incapacitated by illness. Wliat he 
said he would do has been faithfully done, but how was all 
this money lost? It is not possible to wipe off with a dash 
the figures of four or five hundred thousand dollars lost in a 
State bank carrying over half a million of State deposits, the 
kept back school moneys of six million of people, to wipe it off 
as a boy wipes off a slate with a wet towel. There must con- 
tinue to be State money deposits in large amounts in the 
banks, and there is no change in the system, but a politically 
hammered down one and one-half per cent, interest to be 
paid, and it is worth while to know what dangers these de- 
posits are exposed to. 



THE QUAY MACHINE DIStsEGTED. 239 

"Tlie wind keeps on Mowing hard from Politician's Reef 
and over the dark caverns of the bankrupt banks where poor 
Hopkins was swept from his feet and shipwrecked. Who 
made the plots that miscarried? Are the only lips that could 
speak dumb in death? Were the knots all tied that not one 
will slip to the hand of the Attorney General or bank com- 
missioner or receiver, whose business it is to unravel the 
mysteries that concern the taxpayers whose money was at risk 
without interest from the founding to the closing of the bank? 
This is a questio;n. of public interest and involves the methods 
of the conduct of our State Banking Department. 

"I have spoken longer than I intended; the gravity of the 
occasion must be my apology if I have wearied you. You 
ask what can be done? We are on the eve of the most im- 
portant election we have ever had, and you have the remedy 
in your own hands. To spend $158,000,000 in four months 
in a national war to take the West India Islands, and permit 
a great State like Pennsylvania, by its misgovernment and 
fraud, to sap the foundations of Republicanism, seems idiotic 
and suicidal. I have no duel with any man. I have no con- 
troversy with Mr. Quay. I have never said a word about him 
as an individual. Instead, it is the Senator of this great 
State, rendezvousing with four or five of his machines, who 
seem to carry pocket telephones, to be advised of his hotel 
visits and railroad arrivals — always the same old four. I wish 
he were on this platform to-day and among these 25,000 
voters. I would treat him with the utmost politeness, and 
repeat in his presence every word I have uttered. I never like 
to cut down a tree, not even a dead tree; I would rather plant 
a tree, and this is what I seek to do. 

"There are to-day two Republican camps, and the largest 
one, I believe, is where the people are rallying for direct at- 
tack upon the corrupted machine that has thwarted upright 
and constitutional government. There will come from this 
uprising of those who refuse to follow the Quay machine an 
anti-machine free people's organization that will forevermore 
guarantee to the people a true expression of their will. This 
is the day to put good government on its feet. No man should 
be elected to office, high or low. Gubernatorial or Legislative, 



240 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

who is not publicly pledged against the Quay machine, its 
Legislatures, with their vicious levys of taxes and mastery of 
Republican politics. They have shattered and destroyed good 
government in Pennsylvania, and must now be shattered and 
destroyed themselves, since they scorned their opportunities. 

CANDIDATE STONE'S BURDEN. 

"For Candidate Stone to carry Quay, the master of and 
chief controller of the bosses and the machine, will be heavier 
than it was for Senator Quay to carry Stone through the con- 
vention. 

"Through a party I ana. credibly informed that the Honest 
Government party came first with their nomination, followed 
by the Prohibitionists, People's and Liberty parties, who after- 
ward successively indorsed the one platform of the Honest 
Government party. The only thing I have against them is 
that there is not enough of them, but there will doubtless be 
more. The supreme object of this contest is without malice or 
meanness, by enlightenment and truth to rescue the govern- 
ment from the machine and restore it to the people. 

"Sixth — Open all the doors to the facts. Organize meet- 
ings and workers throughout every county, down to the small- 
est school district and make it impossible for any honest man 
to vote for the dishonored Quay machine. *If any man pulls 
down the flag shoot him on the spot' was one of the watch- 
words of the Civil War. In this contest to defeat the Quay 
tickets and elect anti-Quay tickets all along the line, and es- 
pecially to the Legislature, where there is a certainty of suc- 
cess let every man in this State crisis keep up his flag, refuse 
fellowship to those who uphold the fraud, treachery, bribery 
and dishonesties of the last Legislature. 

"Oppose stoutly every endeavor to create another Legisla- 
ture to be governed by the same Quay machine. As the clock 
of the Maine stopped suddenly the night the battleship went 
down in the harbor of Havana, see to it that the clock of the 
Quay machine stops going after your votes are cast. I take 
leave of you confident of victory, and ready to help you lower 
your taxes and make a greater State. These are the days of 
final reckoning with the Quay machine. Let the State statute 



THE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 241 

book be the judgment book in settling its worthiness or nn- 
worthiness. Then the day after the November election shall 
be Pennsylvania's greatest Peace Jubilee. 

REPLY TO CHAIRMAN ELKIN. 

"I wish to add a few more words in reference to an inter- 
view handed me on my way here, purporting to be an official 
statement of John P. Elkin, chairman of the Kepublican State 
Committee. I will not tax your patience by entering at this 
late hour into as full a notice of this interview as I might 
otherwise have done if it had come to my notice earlier. I 
wish, however, to say that this interview gives evidence of the 
^rattle' which the machine is evidently in. It is clearly a 
carefully prepared interview to take the people's minds off 
of the main issues and hammer a man who dares to show up 
the machine. 

"To throw stones at me personally only weakens the Quay 
machine. I have lots of time and rather good temper to meet 
them if so disposed. All such interviews, or pronunciamentos 
of the Quay machine will weaken their cause. The contest 
now making has no reference to me personally. I am not 
before the State as a candidate, nor would I be willing to look 
to the'Quay machine for a certificate of character, particularly 
from the chairman of the State Committee, the signer of the 
indemnity bond, who claims that there was no padded pay roll 
for which it was given, and that the Governor made a mistake 
in supposing him guilty and driving him from the Attorney 
General's office. 

"I agree with Mr. Elkin that it is time to reply to the 
charges of misgovernment and the responsibility therefor of 
the Quay machine, but it was time six months ago, when the 
Lancaster speech was made. But the reliance upon confusing 
the people with the war made it unnecessary to notice the 
arraignment of the machine until they now thought the 
people were busy thinking. 

"To show the audacity of the Quay machine, Mr. Elkin ar- 
rogates to himself proprietorship of the party and proposes 
to try to put me out of it. He will find that he has a pretty 
hard job. I was told to-day that a young soldier from 



242 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

Wrightsville, York county, died at Santiago and was carried 
into the dead-house two hours before he was dead. Under-, 
taker Elkin is trying to dig my grave Republican wise, and 
bears me into the dead-house with his interview at least two 
hours before I am dead, as he will find out. Neither am I 
willing, and many thousands more like me, to accept from 
Mr. Elkin an interpretation of what Republican duty is. I do 
not get my ideas from subserviency to bossism, nor am I paid 
in office holding to exploit temporary sub-bossism from the 
stool of the committee's desk. 

"He totally misrepresents the facts of my relation to the 
President, for which I think I have the authority of the 
President's own words to me personally. Instead of disrupt- 
ing the party, . I am trying to save it, and I have labored 
earnestly to get its leaders to see that they were splitting it 
by their stubborn deafness to all counsel except the Andrews- 
Elkin-Saylor-Lytle type. It is a heavy load which it is carry- 
ing, which will surely carry it down. 

"Mr. Elkin's eflEort to write me down as not being a taxpayer 
is amusing, when I paid within the last forty-eight hours be- 
tween $95,000 and $100,000 in one payment. His confession 
that he does not believe in storekeepers who invest their own 
money and give large employments, numbering in my par- 
ticular case to over eight thousand people, who get their sup- 
port out of my business, is not of any consequence to the State. 
I have never been unwilling to pay personal taxes. I refused 
to protest against the increase proposed by the mercantile 
tax bill, as it placed additional burdens on all the small store- 
keepers throughout the State. The passage of this bill will 
doubtless be attempted again by the next Legislature if it is 
a Quay-controlled body. It is never a hardship to people of 
large business to pay taxes; the hardship is to the small people. 

WANAMAKER AND THE GAS LEASE. 

"It certainly is a misfortune for Mr. Elkin to have brought 
in the corporations, who, after officeholders, are the main sup- 
port of the Quay machine. To show the personal pique of the 
disturbed chairman, he makes reference to the lease of the 
Philadelphia Gas Works. What relation that has to State 



TEE QUAY MACHINE DIS8EGTED. 243 

issues I do not know. To me has frequently been given the 
credit of having prevented the sale of the City Gas Works to 
the pohticians, seven or eight years ago, and I am well satis- 
fied with my position of having approved a well-fortified lease 
of the City Gas Works, enabling the city to get more than it 
ever did in money, and with a string upon the works, by which 
the city can take them back, if it chooses, at the end of ten 

years. 

"It is most paltry and childish to attempt to make a shadow 
upon me because I was one of the original stockholders of the 
United Gas Improvement Company, as if a small interest on 
my actual investment could influence my judgment. I think 
I owned the stock when I obstructed the sale of the works 
to the city. I am opposed to the sale of the works, but quite 
in favor of an ironclad lease that breaks up a political jobbing 
establishment. I wonder whether Mr. Elkin knows I am a 
much larger stockholder in the city— being, it is stated, the 
largest individual taxpayer except one. It is a wonder he did 
not say that. When I went over to the City Council chamber, 
not of my own volition, but at the request of the chairman 
of Councils' committee, asking me to give an opinion, my 
object was entirely to improve the quality of the gas for my 
establishment. 

"The fact is, I might have stated at the Council hearing 
that I had disposed of part of my holdings in the United Gas 
Improvement Company after the lease came before the Coun- 
cil committee, not valuing the investment sufficiently to keep 
it until the lease was consummated. 

CHALLENGE TO ELKIN. 
"How can anyone confide in the judgment or honesty of 
the Quay machine when it puts up its chairman to say that the 
Eepublican party management is not intimately connected 
with the People's Bank, the Guarantors' and the State In- 
surance Company? If the facts do not prove that Mr. Elkin 
is wrong in this, I will take the stump with him and go about 
the State and put these matters straight before the people. 

"The attempt to tie up-^the Keystone Bank failure in the 
category is purely malicious. I had no more to do with that 



244 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB, 

failure, directly or indirectly, as has been well proven, than I 
have to do with the padded pay rolls which Mr. Elkin claims 
never existed. At my own urgent request, I went before the 
city CounciFs committees and laid there all the knowledge I 
had in the premises. I am Just as ready to do it again; there 
is not anything I care to conceal, neither will it annoy me. 
If it is any pleasure to the State Committee to misrepresent 
me, I am quite willing to devote my time, without any loss of 
temper, and give any information on this or any other point 
that their animosity to me desires. 

"It is certainly clear to me that whenever the Quay machine 
volcano belches such sulphur and smoke it will help the 
people to understand the nature of the Quay machine, the 
spirit of its men and its determination to not allow the fair 
discussion of its operations without attempting to murder 
whoever is brave enough to be a soldier. Daubing with this 
kind of plastering and breaking up party machine is not going 
to help it. The people cannot be deceived by dragging in 
personalities or attempting to inflame passions. 

"I have avoided carefully the use of a large amount of 
material reflecting on persons. My battle is to reconstruct 
the old party upon a principle of fairness to the people with- 
out any reference to me personally. There are thousands 
more like me that will never stop until this is done. It is a 
Republican party we prefer if we can get it, and the party 
killers are the Elkin-Mylin-Haywood-Andrews-Saylor-Lytle 
crowd, with the Quay machine as their captain. 

"It is a burning shame that tens of thousands of self-re- 
specting Republicans are driven away by the bossism that is 
exemplified in the Elkin interview. I have nothing to defend, 
but I am determined that even such a thin attempt to fool the 
people with facts shall not go unnoticed." 

DR. SWALLOW'S LETTER TO QUAY. 
Rev. Dr. Swallow, who spoke after Mr. Wanamaker con- 
cluded, briefly referred to the statements he has heretofore 
made regarding his candidacy for Governor, and then read a 
copy of the following letter, which he sent to Senator Quay 
to-day: 



THE QUAY MACHINE DISSECTED. 245 

"Harrisburg, Pa., Sept. 1, 1898. 
"Matthew Stanley Quay. 

"Dear Sir: — My attention has been called to an article 
found in a recent number of your State organ in which you 
threaten me with prosecution for my connection with an 
article exposing your character, found in the New York 
^ Voice' of August 18. 

"Permit me to say that my understanding of it is that this 
objectionable matter is almost identical with that published in 
pamphlet form over the signatures of a large number of repu- 
table citizens of Philadelphia several years ago. It seems also 
to refer to the same charges made against you by the New 
York 'World' some ten years ago. The publishers of that 
paper offered to come to Pennsylvania if you would only 
prosecute them, and offered further to pay all the expense of 
the trial, including your attorneys' fees. 

"I join you in the opinion that you need vindication badly, 
and if the 'Voice' article is true would add that you need 
purgation and also fumigation. Having rested under this 
awful stigma so many years, is it worth your while to try to 
unload it now? 

"However, to expedite your vindication, if you are bent on 
suing for it, permit me to say that I will be at my office all 
day to-morrow, September 2, also on Tuesday, September 6, 
when it will be my pleasure to accept and acknowledge ser- 
vice of summons. Personally, anything I can do in the in- 
terest of truth to render your reputation less monstrous than 
it has always been, I will be glad to do so. 

"Yours, for the public good, 
(Signed) "S. C. SWALLOW." . 



246 f^PEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKEB. 

THE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 



How the Machine is striving to control it — How the 

Bosses put their Bills through, as shown in the 

methods pursued in the last notorious 

Legislature — The Republicanism 

of State Chairman John 

P. Elkin. 



In the Wayne County Court House on September IGth, at 
Honesdale^ before an audience that overflowed the court 
room, at least 2,000 persons being present, Mr. Wanamaker 
made one of the most striking speeches of the campaign 
against the Quay machine. 

The complete speech of Mr. Wanamaker follows: 

"I have come at your call to dispassionately consider with 
you the present condition of political matters in our State. 
It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back; it was the 
record of the last Legislature that tried beyond endurance 
the patience of a long-suffering people. 

"The reckless defiance of honor and justice started the fire 
of revolution within the party that burst into a blaze that the 
Quay machine engine can never put out; all their noise and 
clatter will not avail. 

'^^For a time the smoke of the war concealed the confla- 
gration, but the clear skies of peace have not only revealed 
the exact political situation, but have brought intense appre- 
hension to the machine j^oliticians. 

"With a most important election but fifty days distant the 
Quay machine regulars are running hither and thither like 
chickens without heads and tumbling over each other in their 
anxiety to make it appear that the issues of the campaign are 
totally different from what they really are. 

"Candidates, chainnen and hirelings, by speech, letter, 
circular and paid-for newspaper editorials, each have the old 
pie woman's collander, sifting over their wares a kind of 
white sugar to hide the real contents inside. 

"A united effort is being made to have the people believe 
that the election in November is to give the vote of confi- 



THE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 247 

dence to Mr. McKinlcy tliat the two Senators and Colonel 
Stone, the nominee for Governor, with their Pennsylvania 
Congressmen under machine direction denied when the first 
steps of the war were taken. That it is to elect Congressmen 
to enlarge the trade of the United States in the new United 
States' islands; that it has something to do with the tariff 
and sound money, all of which is the baldest humbug and 
sheerest nonsense. 

NO EVASION IS POSSIBLE. 

"The tariff and money problems are practically settled for 
a time. President McKinley is not on trial in Pennsylvania 
and never can be put on trial by the Quay-Andrews-Elkin 
partnership. The Quay machine need not try to hide its 
black face behind President McKinley so that the people will 
not shoot at it. 

"The people are gunning for the Quay machine and insist 
on the national question moving out of the way that they 
may have a good shot at it and destroy its costly mischief- 
making. 

"Another contrivance of the cunning Quay machine 
manipulators is to shift the issues of the present election 
from its own maladministration to play the boarding school 
game of twenty questoins; to steer your inquiries to false 
issues and direct your minds to individuals who are not candi- 
dates, but only foremost in opposing a longer lease of power 
of the political Molly Maguires, is the common bunco game 
of the paid committeemen and speakers in the employ of 
the machine. 

"The Quay-Elkin Committee carry a large stock of Quay- 
Elkin wall paper, with which the journeymen are trying to 
cover up the old cracks and stains of the party. 

"I must speak plainly; the tremendous interests at stake 
call for it. In this busy life there is not time for soft words 
upon serious questions. I never liked to spend my time in 
driving nails into lathes of plaster; we are not children at the 
sea sailing paper boats. Our ships laden with lifetime toil 
are amid the breakers and beating up toward treacherous 
rocks and stormy waters. 



248 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

"Let me ask you to clearly fix in your minds exactly what 
the November election is for. You are to elect one Governor, 
one Lieutenant Governor, one Secretary of Internal Affairs, 
two Superior Court Judges, two Congressmen-at-large, 204 
members of the State House of Eepresentatives, 25 members 
of the State Senate; 229 men, who, with 24 Eepublicans and 
one Democrat, who hold over, will constitute the next Legis- 
lature. You also elect county, town, borough and township 
officers. 

"The people of each locality must take an interest and 
pride in selecting their officers, but should never allow the 
trading to the «ost of larger interest, as was the case in Phila- 
delphia when the Eepublicans traded votes for Bryan to get 
votes for Sheriff Crow, and thus decreased McKinley's ma- 
jority by 30,000. 

"The chief interest in the State ticket centers upon the 
Governorship, the highest post of honor in the State govern- 
ment. A Governor nominated, owned and controlled by the 
machine is a dangerous tool against the people. He is sub- 
ject to his masters, who make sure of his abject subserviency 
before his nomination is permitted. 

"He has the veto power and can use it or not, as he pleases. 
It was the use of the veto sledge hammer by Governor Hast- 
ings that spoiled the carefully constructed operations of the 
spoils Legislature of 1896-97. 

"If the veto axe in the hands of Governor Hastings were a 
frontispiece of the Elkin campaign book it would be much 
more appropriate than that of President McKinley, who has 
nothing to do with State issues, and whose position can never 
be strengthened by the success of those who sought first to 
defeat him and then to embarrass his splendid administration. 

THE COMING LEGISLATURE. 

"The election of 229 men to the Legislature is after all 
the most important event of each two years to the people. 
If the very same men who failed to carry their measures 
through the last Legislature are re-elected and more like 
them, with a Governor to match, the State of Pennsylvania 



THE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 249 

will be forced to deliver what Governor Hastings held up last 
year. 

^'In addition thereto, every class of men and industry, with 
every county or district that has dared to oppose the machine 
will be visited with Quay machine punishments to make them 
smart for their venturesomeness in thinking and acting for 
themselves. 

"The State Legislature also elects one United States 
Senator, who serves six years from the 4th of March, 1899. 
Senator Quay, the acknowledged head and autocrat of the 
machine, is asking to be continued in all his power and privi- 
lege. To cure what to the Quay machine seemed like 
defects in their grist mill of last Winter they have made 
deadly and successful assaults against many men like Senator 
Kauffman, Daniel Moore, Plumer Jeffries and men of the 
incorruptible stamp. 

"It is frequently said that the Legislature is composed of 
what the people elect. This is not true; the people do not 
get their votes counted, for delegates have no actual say as to 
who shall be nominated, nor do the conventions register 
fairly the will of the people. 

"It is a common thing to order snap meetings, change 
hours of meeting and voting without fair notice and alter 
rules at the pleasure of the little bosses, who assume that any- 
thing they do is right if they deliver their districts. 

"Guide posts at the cross roads painted with the wrong 
name and incorrect distances are promptly torn down or re- 
painted, but political guide posts cannot be disturb?id so long 
as the boss elects. The people are at terrible disadvantages 
imder machine rule; they get what they did not expect and 
did not want, and cannot help themselves. 

"It is not a race on equal terms upon an open road. There 
are sets of actors on the political stage, the national boss, who 
touches the wires that move the State bosses, and these in 
turn tie strings to every official, the assessor, tax cellector, 
jury commissioners. 

"To convict thieves who pillage the treasury and keep 
watch for each other against detection, who stand in to pro- 



250 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

tect cacli other^ is next to an impossibility. If a man 
threatens to squeal he is promised a promotion or a place for 
his brother-in-law, or a county bridge over his father's farm 
road, and so the carnival of crime goes on. 

FOOLISH PLEAS BEING MADE. 

"The leaders, chairman and hired men in offices who 
own newspapers and are compelled to dance when the boss 
jerks the string are in a kind of vertigo just now. The news- 
paper of the Librarian of Congress tearfully beseeches Penn- 
sylvanians not to play with fire on McKinley's account, and 
points dolefully to the election in Maine, where there is a 
great Eepublican victory with but one speech of Tom Eeed. 

"Such silly, high-flavored office-holding talk of the ex- 
Minister to China, now snugly settled for life, is a poor com- 
pliment to the intelligence of the State he has moved out of 
to settle in Washington. The fact that State committeemen, 
and so many of the newspaper people, have offices that give 
them salaries out of the public lap may account for the loud 
beating of their various drums and their inconsistent con- 
duct; but it does not excuse it. 

"The bulk of a big chairman and a fourth column double- 
leaded editorial by an office-holder or adroitly-edited cam- 
paign books, decked with pictures of McKinley and flags by 
the dozen, does not prove patriotism or hoodwink the people. 
If you desire to become acquainted with the heart of darkest 
Africa you must become an explorer like Stanley. 

"If you study your interest you can become an explorer in 
the desert of pohtics without going outside of your own Com- 
monwealth; you enter the heart of darker Pennsylvania at 
Harrisburg. 

"If you sail up the river of appropriations you will soon 
find yourself in the midst of awful cataracts and stupendous 
caves infested by the Committees of Appropriations, and 
smugglers of Government goods. 

"It will be well worth your while to explore this mysterious 
land with its one great highway of politics. It may over- 
work you somewhat to study the specimens of this political 



THE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 251 

country, but it is altogether better that you should under- 
stand the regions of this dark country at your very door. 

LAST LEGISLATURE WITHOUT EXCUSE. 

"The Republican machine, through its State chairman and 
its nominee for Governoi*, is at the present time seeking by 
the most flagrant deception to deny responsibility for the bad 
record of the last Legislature. 

"These champions of the dishonored Legislature of ^97 
boldly give credit to the machine for the seventy or more 
dangerous and vicious bills passed by that truculent body, 
but which were vetoed by an un-Quay-controlled Governor; 
and also for the scores of Treasury raids and plunder-yielding 
schemes attempted for unlawful machine profit, tBa't were 
killed by the unfaltering opposition of the valiant "seventy- 
six." 

"To those familiar with Legislative procedure such claims 
from any party candidate must be received with astonish- 
ment and disgust. For the enlightenment of those who may 
have no other means of learning the truth, I will briefly out- 
line the course a bill must take to become a law under the 
present State Constitution. 

"First, a bill is introduced in either the Senate or the 
House by a member rising in his place and reading merely 
the title of the bill; thereupon it is referred by. the president 
of the Senate or the Speaker of the House to some particular 
committee. 

"Second, the committee in secret session considers, or is 
supposed to consider, the bill upon its merits and report the 
same back to the Senate or House, with affirmative or nega- 
tive recommendations, and it is printed and placed upon the 
calendar. 

"Third, upon three separate days the bill is read in full 
by the reading clerk and voted upon each time by the mem- 
bers, and after passing either House or Senate it is again 
referred to a similar committee of the opposite branch. 

"Fourth, the bill then follows the same course through the 
second branch, viz.: considered by committee and reported, 



252 SPEECHES OF BON. JOHN WAN AM ARE R. 

read on three separate days and voted npon after each 
reading. 

PROGRESS OF A BILL. 

"Thus it will be seen that every bill before it reaches the 
Governor's hands must at least pass before two different com- 
mittees (those of the Senate and House respectively), and are 
read and voted upon six separate times, three times in the 
Senate and three times in the House, making eight different 
steps, at any one of which the controlling power of the Legis- 
lature can defeat the bill. 

''But the real life-giving origin of all Legislative measures 
is the committee to which it is referred. The ownership of 
the committees of the Senate and the House controls the 
fountain head of legislation. 

"Vicious bills, with machine backing, can always be favor- 
ably reported by machine committees and meritorious bills 
can always be killed, unless public sentiment is so strong that 
their consideration can be taken out of the hands of the 
committee by the Senate or House, as was the case with the 
Kauffman Treasury bill, providing for the payment of in- 
terest on State deposits. 

"It is a matter of history that the Quay machine held that 
bill in committee three months. If that interest bill had 
been passed twenty years ago it would have saved the tax- 
payers of this State more than $2,000,000, which Senator 
Quay and his henchmen have converted to their own personal 
use. 

"The Quay-constructed committee was forced to report the 
bill, because of a resolution offered in the Senate by Senator 
Kauffman to discharge the committee from further consider- 
ation of the bill, and that the bill be reported to the Senate 
with affirmative recommendation. 

"As the source of all legislation is with Legislative com- 
mittees the kind of bills favorably reported by a committee 
unerringly portrays the political and moral character of the 
men composing said committees. 



TEE NEXT LEGISLATURE. ^53 

MACHINE MAKES COMMITTEES. 

"The making up of committees is all done by the machine, 
and is the laborious work of weeks. Every man's political 
leanings are first canvassed, his business affiliations are con- 
sidered, and his strength of character examined. 

"I am told it is necessary for a member to have the per- 
sonal indorsement of Senator Quay before he can obtain a 
place on certain committees and that powerful corporations 
have the entire naming of other committees. 

"A well-known member of the House was desirous of ob- 
taining a place on a certain corporation committee and was 
directed by the Speaker of the House to make application to 
the office of a Philadelphia railway company, which he did, 
and, after giving the proper assurances, he was made a mem- 
ber of the committee. 

The Appropriation Committees, the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee, the Corporation Committees and the Railroad Com- 
mittees are among the most important that determine vital 
questions affecting the interests of the people. 

"The influences that controlled and the malign power that 
directed the action of the standing committees of the last 
Legislature are responsible for every bad bill that was placed 
upon the Legislative calendar with a favorable recom- 
mendation. 

"The Senate and the House Appropriation Committees 
that reported favorably upon every mileage grab, every 
junketing job, every appropriation bill steal, every fake in- 
vestigation bill, every padded pay roll item, were responsible 
for all the raids made upon the State Treasury at the last 
session of the Legislature. 

"It is not always easy or even possible to properly place the 
responsibility for the passage of dangerous legislation, but 
in this case the accountability is made easy, positive and un- 
deniable, as will be seen by an analysis of the makeup of the 
committees that gave these measures the first breath of life. 

"The Appropriation Committee of the Senate was composed 
of twenty-one ultra-Quay men, two anti-Quay nren and two 
Democrats. The Appropriation Committee of the House 



254 SFEEGHE8 OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

was composed of twenty-three subservient Quay men, one 
anti-Quay man and five Democrats. 

HISTORY OF SOME MACHINE BILLS. 

"In other words, the committees which approved the at- 
tempted raids upon the Staite Treasury, amounting to hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars, were composed of forty-three 
Quay men, selected by the machine for their willingness to 
obey any and all orders, three anti-Quay men and seven Dem- 
ocrats, four of whom took their orders from the machine. 

"The infamous Becker bills to destroy the vital principles 
of Philadelphia's city charter and deliver the city over to 
twenty-one Quay Councilmen was reported favorably from a 
committee composed of thirteen Quay men and two Demo- 
crats. 

"The Kunkle fire-alarm bill, to require all stores, factories, 
warehouses, office buildings, school and public institutions to 
have automatic fire-alarms connected with the municipal 
system, and giving a monopoly of the business to a company 
of State politicians, was reported by a committee composed of 
- sixteen Quay men, six anti-Quay and three Democrats. 

"The Simon electric light bill, to compel municipalities to 
purchase existing electric light plants before being allowed 
to erect their own, was reported favorably from a committee 
composed of seventeen Quay men, four anti-Quay and two 
Democrats. 

"The brewery license bill, to grant a license to any person, 
without regard to personal character or fitneSs, for the manu- 
facture of beer, upon the payment of $1,000 to the State 
Treasurer, and allowing breweries to be located next to 
churches and schoo-lhouses, was reported favorably from a 
committee composed of seventeen Quay men^ three anti-Quay 
men and four Democrats. 

"Though every person in the State of Pennsylvania except 
the Eepublican State chairman and the Eepublican candidate 
for Governor must know that the standing committees of all 
Legislatures dominated by the Quay machine are but con- 
venient and pliable instruments, yet an examination of the 
Legislative records of '97 discloses such startling evidence of 



THE NEXT LEGISLATURE, 255 

a single purpose, to serve only the interests of the machine, 
that I want to give you a few Examples. 

"The Becker bill, a Quay political measure to change the 
form of municipal government for 1,000,000 people, was in- 
troduced in the Senate on April 14, referred to the commit- 
tee and reported affirmatively the same day by a committee 
composed of thirteen Quay men and two Democrats. 

"The Saylor bill, to permit the State Treasurer to pay the 
expenses of investigating committees before such bills were 
passed by the Legislature or approved by the Governor, which 
would have given to Quay committees last session more than 
$50,000 that was vetoed as illegal and excessive items, was 
introduced on April 29, and reported favorably on the same 
day, from a committee composed of thirteen Quay men and 
one anti-Quay man. 

"The notorious Lexow bill, the anthracite, the bituminous, 
the oleo, the penitentiary, the Capitol fire, the Treasury, the. 
insurance scandal investigating bills and the Grant Tomb 
and Washington Monument junketing trips, aggregating 
$129,541.72, were all introduced and reported favorably on 
the same day from a committee composed of twenty-four Quay 
men and one anti-Quay man. 

EVIL FATE OF GOOD BILLS. 

"But how different with bills for the public good, that 
were opposed by the machine. The State deposit interest bill 
was introduced January 19, and on April 13, three months 
later, it was forced from the committee by Senator Kauff- 
man's resolution to discharge the committee. 

"The Bliss tax bill, to raise the rate of taxation on corpo- 
rations, was introduced on February 8 and was not reported 
from a committee composed of twenty-four Quay men and 
one anti-Quay man until April 13, and then only upon prom- 
ise that it would be recommitted. 

"The two bills placing a tax on beer were introduced, one 
on Pebruary 10, the other on March 25, and reported April 
8 and 9 respectively. 

"I have on previous occasions referred to many of these 
bills, but never before to give the detail of their passages and 



256 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

the personnel of the committees thai were responsible for 
them. 

"I have spoken by the book, and yon can have further 
proofs to settle the facts whenever any one questions these 
statements. 

"Some little attention has been drawn recently to the state- 
ments of John P. Elkin, who for a month past has been prom- 
ising to refute the statements against the last Legislature and 
the Quay machine that have been made upon the stump dur- 
ing the past six months. 

"Among the items of foreign news to-day it is stated that 
Vesuvius is now in a state of eruption and that hot lava is 
flowing down the mountain sides and destroying the foliage. 

"It would seem that the Pennsylvania Vesuvius — the Quay 
machine — through one of its craters is in a state of eruption, 
pouring out the hot lava of falsehood and fable. 

DISCUSSION OF CHAIRMAN ELKIN. 

"I have been asked who Mr. Elkin is. I have but little 
personal acquaintance with him, but personally a pleasant 
one. I am unwilling to become engaged in any personal alter- 
cations in these political discussions. I am a citizen, a voter 
and an old-time Eepublican, and claim the right to discuss in 
good spirit and temper candidates for office and the managers 
of campaigns who are in point of fact nearly always supported 
by public money gathered by subscription or assessments. 

"I am informed that Mr. Elkin was appointed State Deputy 
Attorney General by Governor Hastings in 1895, and soon 
after became a candidate for Eepublican State chairman. 
United States Senator Quay, fearing to allow Mr. Elkin's 
name to go to the front, became a candidate himself, and as 
soon as he was elected turned over the office to Mr. Elkin. 

"Thirteen months ago Mr. Elkin was obliged to resign from 
the office of Deputy Attorney General because of his confessed 
participation in unlawfully conspiring with others to get a 
large sum of money from the State Treasury upon a padded 
pay roll. 

"This, however, does not seem to have affected his standing 
or eligibility for State chairman. N'otwithstanding he was 



TEE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 257 

forced from the Attorney Generars office in disgrace, lie has 
remained continually at the head of the Kepublican machine 
and the commander-in-chief of a committee representing 
every county in the State, to whom is committed under his 
direction the conduct of the election. 

"This State official, sworn to guard the public treasury, 
caught in the commission of an unlawful act, turned out of 
office, unblushingly attempts to justify his conduct upon the 
plea that the machine of which he is the sub-head has, by 
the same method, robbed the State for years. 

"Public opinion was so strong at the time the ladling out 
of the money of the Treasury was discovered that it drove 
him out of the Attorney Generars office with quick step, but 
he has evidently now determined to meet the issue with de- 
fiance and audaciously defends the right of use of the money 
of the State Treasury without Legislative authority. 

ELKIN'S IDEA OF THE PARTY. 

"This is the same man who claims to be a law in himself 
for the Treasury; this is the same man who assumes to act as 
Pope to the Republican party of Pennsylvania, and excom- 
municate those who do not take orders from his camp. 

"It would seem that the deposed ex-Deputy Attorney Gen- 
eral and State chairman has discovered that the Republican 
party in Pennsylvania is not strong enough to retain in its 
ranks those who hold opinions of their own, that it means 
to establish a kind of Salt Lake settlement from which shall 
be shut out all others than the ring consorts, the Republican 
valets, the lawbreakers. Treasury looters, indemnity bond 
signers, padded pay-rollers, and such as will add, divide and 
be still. 

"The thousands and tens of thousands who follow the old 
flag of Lincoln Republicanism from principle are to be denied 
a place in the home they have built. 

"I am asked to notice that Chairman Elkin declares that 
he has made every effort to bring about harmony within the 
Republican party. The truth is it is the Elkin- Andrews-Say- 
lor-Quay-L3rtles, and even so genial and handsome a man as 



258 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

Hardenberg, who lias always trained with this set, that has 
brought on this condition of affairs. 

"Only deaf ears have been turned to the people's appeals 
for less machine and more principle, and setting the people 
aside by defeating such as Kauffman and striking out every 
man who has been independent enough to choose for himself 
his Legislative course has caused the dissensions and widened 
the chasm between the people and the machine. 

"I grant that Mr. Elkin has followed the instinct of a 
machine-made politician in endeavoring to bring about a basis 
of harmony upon barter and deal. The Quay substitute chair- 
man, who after all, is Quay himself, I believe, has been and 
still is perfectly willing to sit down and divide the people^s 
offices among the politicians representing opposing factions 
upon the condition tliat they will agree to support Senator 
Quay for re-election. 

THE PEOPLE DISREGARDED. 

"I cannot tell how many men the machine have been willing 
to favor for nomination as members of the Legislature and 
offered to discount candidate's notes based upon salaries un- 
earned by which assessments might be paid providing some 
kind of a bond is given to go along, as they term it, with the 
machine and support its bills and its people for re-election. 

"Where do the people come in in these arrangements? 
What effort has he made to harmonize his machine with the 
people? What will he do to give back into the State Treasury 
the thousands of dollars illegally taken from it? 

"Who will go security for the machine against indemnity 
bonds, padded pay rolls, junketing jobs, appropriation bill 
steals in the future? Can any one tell whether the machine 
in its efforts to harmonize with the people has favored the 
passage of just and equitable tax laws to lighten excess bur- 
dens now borne by rural lands? 

"Who has received any promise or guarantee that the State 
contracts in which certain prominent party officials are said 
to be secretly interested, will be no longer continued? 

"Where is there any agreement that the machine will cease 
its raids upon the Treasury through the State printer and 



TEE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 259 

other departments? What efforts have been made to satisfy 
the people that the machine will not cut down the public 
schools appropriations again? 

"Has the confident chairman harmonized with the farmers 
by promising protection to the pure butter interests? What 
guarantee shall the people have if they will harmonize that 
there will be no more Becker bills, electric light snakes, guar- 
antors jobs, Andrews' banking bills, fire alarm bills, pool 
bills, brewery license bills; what hope has he thrown out to 
the people that the Eepublican organization is not to be longer 
used as an individual concern for individual benefit? 

"In the interest of harmony and good feeling within the 
party has the chairman ever offered to resign and relieve the 
party from the odium of having a head who was officially dis- 
missed from office for crime against the law in connection 
with the State Treasury? 

WHAT CHAIRMAN ELKIN KNOWS. 

"Who will say that it is true that Chairman Elkin has done 
all he could to bring about harmony within the Republican 
party unless he has made all these particular offers? Surely 
it cannot be possible that the State chairman is ignorant of 
the feeling among the rank and file of the party. 

"He must know that thousands of Republicans will not 
vote their party ticket this year, lest their votes would be 
considered an indorsement of the party chairman^s connec- 
tion with the Treasury raid. 

"Chairman Elkin must know that many of the people will 
not follow his leadership because he openly advocated and 
tried strenuously to take a million of dollars away from the 
public schools. 

"Chairman Elkin must know that the farmers are not will- 
ing to follow the leading of any man who favors legalizing 
the sale of oleomargarine to the damage of the great interests 
of pure butter in this State. 

"Chairman Elkin must know that the people of Philadel- 
phia have not forgotten his efforts to pass the Becker bills, 
and he must likewise know that the people of Pittsburg re- 
member his connection with the Ripper bill. 



260 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

^'Chairman Elkin must know that a man to be chairman 
of the Eepubhcan organization, justifying his signature to 
the notorious indemnity bond, must give some security to 
the people that when the W. A. Stone slate is carried out 
and W. H. Andrews becomes the Secretary of the Common- 
wealth, and Chairman Elkin becomes Attorney General he 
will not dip into the Treasury again with more indemnity 
bonds. 

''Chairman Elkin must know that the widespread belief 
• that he is to be taken care of by some fat office when his party 
succeeds in the Fall will drive hosts of voters away from sup- 
porting the Eepublican ticket. 

"Chairman Elkin must not forget that it is very much in 
the way of harmony so long as the people remember his con- 
nection with the defeat of the reform bills and the passage of 
counterfeits that permit election frauds and crimes of the 
most flagrant character. 

"Chairman Elkin must know that it would never be pos- 
sible to harmonize the Eepublican party by management of 
the State Committee in the interests of a few favored office 
holders. 

"Chairman Elkin may have forgotten, but the people do not 
forget, that when McKinley was before them for the Presi- 
dency, and sound money was the supreme object all over, that 
he and his satraps industriously endeavored to destroy Eepub- 
lican meetings in various parts of the State because the 
speakers were not of the ring stripe. 

"Chairman Elkin must remember that he absolutely re- 
fused to allow meetings to be arranged at various parts of the 
State to assist MoKinley's election, because he objected to 
Mr. Wanamaker making the speeches, though he never alluded 
to other than tariff and sound money questions. 

"Mr. Chairman Elkin, who is now wildly screaming for 
regularity, is upon the record for refusing to support a man 
for nomination for Governor within the party lines because 
he was not a ring man? 



THE It EXT LEGISLATURE. 361 

MR. Er^KIN'S REPUBLICANISM. 

"Chairman Elkin may forget that there are in existence 
quite a number of letters where in the Fall election of 1896, 
as Chairman of the State Committee, without solicitation, he 
distributed checks of the committees' money ranging from 
$200 to $500 each, to be paid out of the subscriptions of good 
Republicans all over the State, but to do duty for Senator 
Quay as though given out of the Senator's money and with 
the Senator's compliments. 

"Fine Eepublicanism this — ^to mass the State's contribu- 
tions and the collections from State banks, such as Mr. Dar- 
lington referred to in his testimony, and devote to the inter- 
ests of one man to give him a mortgage upon candidates thus 
helped by the chairman's checks. 

"Mr. Chairman Elkin in his efforts for harmony in the 
whole party cannot be expected to bring it about by going into 
counties and openly interfering with primaries against Ee- 
publicans who always stood loyal to the party, and using his 
official position to direct the campaign for the chairman's 
good father's re-election to the United States Senate. 

"The fact that he has, as chairman, been busy in announc- 
ing Senator Quay's candidacy and paying assessments in the 
various counties as though the State Committee was organized 
solely for the benefit of one man is not likely to promote har- 
mony in the party. 

"For illustration: Mr. Elkin will understand, if he will 
remember, that a check was sent to a central county for $500 
by his committee to a candidate to oppose the renomination 
to the Legislature of a member of the "seventy-six" who was 
known to be against the Quay machine. 

"The people are not blind or dumb, at least not all of 
them, and if the men have had their eyes closed to the pecu- 
liar antics of the audacious Quay machine the wives and 
mothers of Pennsylvania have clearer vision and are doing a 
good deal of thinking and talking these days to relieve 
themselves of unnecessary burdens of taxation from wasteful 
legislation. 



262 SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN WANAMAKER. 

''Any party, no matter how many Eepublican flags it car- 
ries, that continues to do business under false pretenses, must 
perish from the earth. Truth long imprisoned is on its way 
through the State, and the ballots of voters are being charged 
with an electricity that will electrocute the party that settles 
down more and more firmly in the chair of corrupt politics. 

"It would seem as though the time was at hand for a new 
beginning. What a funeral of shattered fortunes, broken 
political banks and trust companies has passed along before 
the taxpayers during the past year. 

"One after the other the favored concerns of the machine 
have dropped dead and the crash of their fall still echoes in 
the public ears. On the 1st of April last upwards of a million 
of dollars of the people's money were deposited in insolvent 
institutions. Little by little the story has leaked out of how 
the Quay machine enforced interest for the use of public 
money. 

"Small morsels of truth have been tossed to the people by 
the Chester County Trust Company's president. The sample 
bricks from the Quay machine kiln are in sight of the people. 

PEOPLE LEARNING THE TRUTH. 

"That machine of which Mr. Darlington confesses he was 
a part and acknowledges his dictation of where deposits should 
be made, and how long they should stay, and what should be 
done with the interest they earn, is still on the witness-stand. 

"The curt refusal to disclose the names of the receivers of 
unlawful interest will not suffice the deeply injured State 
which has not only lost its interest money by the power of 
the Quay machine that has so long successfully prevented the 
jiassage of a bill, but has disgraced the party by the demor- 
alization and debauchery of politics through the use of man- 
ipulated State moneys. 

"It is the unknown quantity that has become the study of 
thousands of voters of this State during the last few months. 
Thoughtful men are examining the ruins of the People's 
Bank, Guarantors' Company, the State Insurance Company 
and plying serious questions that still remain unanswered. 



THE NEXT LEGISLATURE. 263 

"The Keeder-Loper-Boyer-Darlington presidents still walk 
the streets, though the grass of Summer has grown rank and 
tall on the poor suicide's grave, whose wail is still in the 
city air. 

"If it be true that no hope for better poli'tics in Pennsyl- 
vania could be expected until the political control and uses 
of State moneys through the State institutions changed, it 
is of the first necessity that the law officers of the State should 
give to the people the causes that have brought about the 
conditions that have risked their moneys, lost the stockhold- 
ers' funds, disgraced the State and involved the Republican 
party in dishonor and shame. 

"The wrecks upon the shore need some life-saving station 
for the future of the Republican party, and it is to the Attor- 
ney General and the banking and insurance officers of the 
State that the people must look for deliverance. 

"It is only by the experiences of the past that we can 
learn safe steps for the future. Let no banking officer be 
driven to suicide through the mysteries of politically-pro- 
tected State organizations. Neither let it be said that Penn- 
sylvania law officers are tardy in administering justice." 



,>v 31 



